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El Caso Plame

3 de mayo 2011

Alejandro Torres

Javier Villaseñor

Andrés Rébora

Plame Affair

The phrase Plame Affair (also known as the CIA leak scandal, the CIA leak case, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, and Plamegate) refers to the identification of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer. Mrs.Wilson's relationship with the CIA was formerly classified information. The disclosure was made in a newspaper column entitled "Mission to Niger" written by Robert Novak, and published on July 14, 2003.

Mrs. Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, has stated his opinion in various interviews and subsequent writings (as listed in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth) that members offormer President George W. Bush's administration revealed Mrs. Wilson's covert status as retribution for his op-ed entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003.

Background

State of the Union Address
In late February 2002, responding to inquiries from the Vice President's office and the Departments of State and Defense about the allegation thatIraq had a sales agreement to buy uranium in the form of yellowcake from Niger, the Central Intelligence Agency had authorized a trip by Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate the possibility. The former Prime Minister of Niger Ibrahim Hassane Mayaki reported to Wilson that he was unaware of any contracts for uranium sales to rogue states, though he was approached by a businessman on behalf of anIraqi delegation about "expanding commercial relations" with Iraq, which Mayaki interpreted to mean uranium sales. Wilson ultimately concluded that there "was nothing to the story," and reported his findings in March 2002.

In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significantquantities of uranium from Africa."

"What I Didn't Find In Africa"
After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Joseph C. Wilson wrote a series of op-eds questioning the war's factual basis (See "Bibliography" in The Politics of Truth). In one of these op-eds published in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson argues that, in the State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush misrepresentedintelligence leading up to the invasion and thus misleadingly suggested that the Iraqi regime sought uranium to manufacture nuclear weapons.

The Iraq Intelligence Commission and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at various times concluded that Wilson's claims were incorrect. The Senate report stated that Wilson's report actually bolstered, rather than debunked, intelligence aboutpurported uranium sales to Iraq. Wilson later took strong exception to these conclusions in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth. The State Department also remained highly skeptical about the Niger claim.

Former CIA Director George Tenet said "[while President Bush] had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound," because "from what we know now, Agency officials in the endconcurred that the text in the speech was factually correct — i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa," nevertheless "these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." With regard to Wilson's findings, Tenet stated: "Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad,it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials."

Lewis "Scooter" Libby

According to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby first learned of Valerie Wilson's employment at the CIA in early June 2003 from Vice President Dick Cheney and proceeded to discuss her with six other government...