Why was Joe Wilson Sent to Niger?

AN ENIGMA WITHIN THE LIES

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger in February 2002 by the CIA to perform a mission for which he was not qualified. From his days working in the US embassy in Gabon Wilson had contacts throughout Africa, but contacts do not a weapons of mass destruction expert make. And Wilson had no experience, at least none publicly acknowledged, in the area of weapons proliferation. Yet he was sent on a vital CIA mission, without undergoing the usual national security protocols, to determine whether Saddam Hussein had sought yellowcake from Niger.

His wife, Valerie Plame, did have such WMD experience, and when she recommended Wilson for the job of traveling to Niger and investigating the possibility that Iraq had sought to acquire yellowcake uranium, the CIA listened. Ambassador Wilson got the job.

Even though Wilson had no experience in investigating weapons proliferation issues. And even though Wilson's findings had the potential of leading America into war, or of letting Saddam Hussein off the hook again.

Not that his mission would have taken an expert, necessarily, though one would hope the CIA would have and would use experts on such a momentous mission. He was sent to Niger, after all, to assess one single question: Did Iraq seek yellowcake from Niger? So he went to Niger, all too eager to get himself inserted in the great game. And he sipped tea poolside, never really investigated a thing, and upon returning to the US, delivered a verbal briefing after the trip.
To whom? Well, the same people who sent him to Niger, naturally. Who are...?
We don't know. But we should. Because Wilson's mission appears to have been a sham from the start.

It wasn't handled seriously at all. He filed no after-action reports, left no paper trail other than expense reports, and obtained no hard evidence about anything. His own account of the trip has him never setting foot outside his hotel complex; he met local officials poolside and chatted them up. This is how you investigate the serious question of whether or not Saddam Hussein was attempting to re-start his nuclear programs? And apparently this kind of investigation satisfied whoever sent him to Niger in the first place? Only if they had a pre-determined outcome in mind, and Wilson's briefing more or less fit the bill.

Not long after the war, the CIA started to leak like a Russian submarine. Disinformation began to show up in the press via anonymous CIA sources last summer, as the hunt for Iraq's WMDs wore on.

Exhibit A:

The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.
Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, a CIA official has told the BBC.

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But the CIA official has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.


That diplomat would be our friend, Joseph Wilson, named later in the story. The anonymous CIA officer is mischaracterizing Wilson's report from Niger to smear the President of the United States. That story appeared on the BBC, July 9, 2003. Who is the anonymous CIA source?
Is the source the Anonymous, the CIA officer and author of Imperial Hubris, the book that alleges the US is fighting all the wrong wars to defeat the terrorists, and losing them? Was Anonymous involved in Wilson's mission in any way?

Or is the anonymous BBC source from last year Ms. Plame, seeking to push her husband's story at the appropriate time? Or is it someone else?

Whoever the source is, a couple of things are apparent. First, the source was probably involved in Wilson's trip at some level. At the very least, the source was familiar enough with Wilson's trip to take part in his press offensive, kicked off just a day or two before this story showed up on the BBC. Secondly, the source took the same deceptive line that Wilson took regarding his trip, namely, that his 8 days in Niger debunked the SOTU 16 words citing a UK intel report that Iraq had sought yellowcake from Africa. Wilson's trip to one African country did not and could not have debunked that UK claim; therefore the source was in on the talking points. The reality was that if anything, Wilson's meager findings from Niger actually bolstered the case that Iraq was seeking yellowcake. But his--and the anonyous source's--talking points say otherwise. This smacks of collusion. One other tip toward collusion: Nick Kristof's May 6 article on Wilson mentions Kristof having talked directly with the people who sent Wilson, and they told Kristof that Wilson's report had been sent up at least to the Vice President's office. According to the Senate Intel Committee's report, that wasn't true. The CIA didn't find Wilson's report substantial enough to alter its overall findings on Saddam's WMD pursuits in any way.
Who is the CIA source for the BBC story, and for Kristof's story? Who developed the after-trip talking points that Wilson and at least one CIA officer (and probably more than one) used to build their case against the 16 words?

Behind Joseph Wilson's many lies, we have a set of mysteries on our hands, and we may well have a mole or a small cell of moles working against the interests of the United States from inside the CIA in the midst of war.