Hubris

by Michael Isikoff

  On July 10, when John Cochran of ABC News asked Powell in Pretoria if the administration owed the world an apology for having used the yellowcake claim, Powell dismissed the whole to-do: “This is very overwrought and overblown and overdrawn…. You get the information, you analyze it. Sometimes it holds up, sometimes it does not hold up.” Powell also stated the trailers found in Iraq were the biovans he had spoken about during his Security Council speech, even though his own INR had challenged that conclusion weeks earlier. The purpose of those trailers, he insisted, wasn’t to produce hydrogen for military weather balloons. His UN charge, he added, had “stood the test of time.”

  The Niger imbroglio wouldn’t let up, though. The following day Pincus had a front-page piece in the Post quoting unnamed CIA officials as saying they had tried to dissuade British intelligence from using the yellowcake claim in its September 2002 white paper. This was more evidence of what Libby and other White House hawks suspected: that the agency was looking to escape responsibility for the yellowcake fiasco and to make it appear that administration officials eager for war had irresponsibly pushed a discredited charge. The White House had had enough.

  Early that morning, while Air Force One was on its way to Uganda, Rice came to the press cabin. Shortly before, she had called Tenet in Sun Valley and woken him up in the middle of the night to tell him what was coming. (Tenet was attending a conference for corporate moguls and media bigwigs sponsored by investment banker Herbert Allen.) Having warned the CIA director, Rice, speaking on the record, fired back at the agency. “The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,” Rice told the reporters. She pointed to the still secret NIE and said it had asserted that Iraq had been “seeking yellowcake in Africa.” She dismissed the INR’s dissent as merely “kind of a standard INR footnote.” The White House, she said, had “relied” on the NIE and the CIA. The sixteen words, she maintained, had even been reshaped so that the sentence “reflected better what the CIA thought.” Then Rice made it personal: “I can tell you, if the director of central intelligence had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone, without question…. It would not have been in the speech.” After holding out the sword—on which Tenet was expected to fall—she did insist that Bush retained confidence in the CIA director: “George Tenet has been a terrific DCI.”

  Rice’s comments that morning struck reporters on the press plane as unprecedented for the Bush White House. It signaled a public rift between the White House and the CIA. For more than two and a half years, the bond between the breezy Tenet and tough-talking Bush had been as tight as any in history between a president and a CIA director. “They were like fraternity brothers,” one White House official said. During a joint House-Senate investigation of the intelligence failures of 9/11, Tenet also had protected Bush and refused to release classified documents that might have proven embarrassing to the president (who had paid scant attention to Tenet’s warnings of the al-Qaeda threat). “George gave his heart and soul to the president,” Buzzy Krongard, the agency’s executive director and a Tenet confidant, later observed.

  But the White House was under fire as it had never been before. So it dumped its misfortunes on Tenet. And Bush piled on. After Air Force One touched down in Uganda, the president headed to a meeting with the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, at the Imperial Botanical Beach Hotel. Right before the private chat began, a reporter asked Bush, “Can you explain how an erroneous piece of intelligence on the Iraq-Niger connection got into your State of the Union speech?”

  “I gave a speech to the nation,” Bush replied, “that was cleared by the intelligence services.”

  The reporter attempted a follow-up: “But, sir, how did it get into your speech if it was erroneous?”

  Bush moved on to his meeting with Museveni.

  That sealed it. Tenet, who had done so much to serve Bush and his Iraq agenda, would have to take the blame for the White House.

  After the comments by Rice and Bush, the traveling White House reporters were ushered into a cramped holding room with phone lines. One of the reporters, Time’s John Dickerson, called Washington and left a voice mail message for his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, relaying the latest developments. After Duffy got it, he sent off an e-mail to a Time reporter working on the magazine’s cover story for the week. “John reports…they’ve dimed out Tenet,” it read.

  AFTER the senior staff meeting at the White House that morning, Karl Rove had a brief hallway chat with Scooter Libby and passed on what must have seemed like good news during a tough week. Rove told Libby he had spoken with Novak about the Wilson affair and that the columnist had said he’d be writing a piece on the matter that would mention Valerie Wilson. Following this chat, Rove went to his office.

  THIS Friday was one of Bill Harlow’s most intense days as director of public affairs for the CIA. In public, the CIA’s chief spokesman was known mostly for issuing no-comment responses for stories revealing the deeds or misdeeds of the agency. But Harlow, a moody, brooding part-time novelist, probably played the media better than any government press officer in town. When other government agencies, especially the FBI, had been pilloried for pre-9/11 screwups, Harlow masterfully steered criticism away from the CIA. He would dole out tips to select journalists and for big stories provide them access to senior agency officials. But the events of this week were a test of Harlow’s talents.

  The agency was drafting a public statement accepting responsibility for its failure to properly vet the president’s State of the Union speech. Harlow would later insist Tenet had come up with the idea of the statement on his own. But there was no doubt Tenet was under extreme pressure during this period. Tyler Drumheller, the European Division chief, later recalled walking down the hallway of the seventh floor of CIA headquarters around this time and running into Krongard and another Tenet aide. The two aides said that Tenet was getting pummeled by the White House and had just gotten off the phone with Rice, who had yelled at him. “I’m not sure George isn’t going to resign,” Krongard said, according to Drumheller. Then Tenet wandered by. Drumheller thought he looked like hell. “I hope none of you ever aspire to be DCI [director of central intelligence],” Tenet told the group. He entered the office of James Pavitt, the chief of the operations directorate, and closed the door.

  After Rice had publicly blamed Tenet, Harlow was trying to hammer out the agency’s statement, going through draft after draft. He and other agency officials were engaged in a delicate balancing act. The CIA would have to accept responsibility for the foul-up, but Harlow and the others wanted to note that the CIA had never fully accepted the yellowcake story. Tenet, Krongard later said, “wanted to make clear that we weren’t a total bunch of clods.”

  While he was working on the draft, Harlow was dealing with another knotty problem: Robert Novak. The day before, Novak had called Harlow and said he planned to write a column about Valerie Wilson’s role in sending her husband to Africa. Harlow tried to wave Novak off the story. Novak would later say he had asked Harlow a narrow, specific question—whether it was true, as he had been told, that Valerie Wilson had “suggested” her husband for the trip—and that Harlow responded that she “had not authorized the mission.” Harlow subsequently claimed he told Novak that Valerie Wilson hadn’t arranged for her husband’s trip and had only been asked by colleagues to solicit her husband’s assistance. Whatever Harlow told the columnist, the CIA spokesman wasn’t sure about Valerie Wilson’s precise status at the agency. Harlow knew only the basics: she worked in the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine branch of the agency. She probably was undercover, as most DO employees were. That meant there could be serious problems if Novak named her.*58

  On Friday, as Harlow was crashing on the agency’s yellowcake statement, he checked on Valerie Wilson’s position and confirmed she was indeed a “covered” (as agency people say) officer. He called Novak back. “I hope I convinced you that this is a nonstory,” he later recalled telling Novak. But in case he hadn’t
, Harlow added, “I would ask that you not use her name.” Novak asked why not. Harlow replied that she would “probably” never again be stationed overseas, but exposure of her name “would make it difficult for her to travel overseas or conduct other business for the agency.”

  Harlow had a dilemma. He couldn’t tell Novak outright that Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA officer. To do so would be divulging classified information and violating the law. Most experienced journalists who covered the CIA usually respected his requests not to print something. But Novak wasn’t going along. He subsequently claimed that he thought at the time that if naming Wilson’s wife was a big deal, a senior agency official—maybe even Tenet himself—would call and ask him not to disclose her identity in his column. Nobody did. In any case, he looked up Joe Wilson’s entry in Who’s Who in America and saw his wife’s name listed: Valerie Plame.

  Novak proceeded to finish his column.

  WHILE Bush and the Ugandan president, Museveni, were conducting their meeting, John Dickerson was chatting up Ari Fleischer, who was standing by an old yellow school bus near the filing center for the traveling press corps. Normally such informal conversations with Fleischer bore meager fruit. But this discussion was different. Fleischer, speaking on background—so he could be identified only as a “senior administration official”—launched into a sharp attack on Wilson. Wilson’s report on his Niger trip had been sloppy and contradictory, Fleischer claimed. His trip hadn’t been approved by Tenet or any other senior agency official. And Fleischer (who days earlier had been told about Wilson’s wife by Libby) gave Dickerson a none-too-subtle tip: he should look into who had actually sent Wilson to Africa. Dickerson pressed Fleischer: What are you talking about? Go ask the CIA, Fleischer told him.

  An hour or so later, as Bush spoke at an AIDS treatment center, Dickerson cornered Dan Bartlett, now the White House communications director. Bartlett, an unflappable young Texan, talked with Dickerson about the unseemly clash between the CIA and the White House and the potential political problems for the president. But Bartlett, too, made the point that Wilson had been sent by a relatively low-ranking agency employee, and he encouraged Dickerson to follow up. When he was done talking to Fleischer and Bartlett, Dickerson wrote down in his notebook, “Look who sent.”

  The Bush White House’s standard operating procedure was to ignore critics and stick to its script, just push ahead. But now Dickerson sensed there was a concerted effort to bring down Wilson. There might be a story here, he thought. He called his Washington bureau and failed to reach anyone. His editors and fellow correspondents were in a meeting. It was about 10:30 A.M. in Washington.

  A LITTLE after 11 A.M., Matthew Cooper placed a call to Rove. Cooper was an easygoing veteran newsmagazine correspondent; he was also a minor Washington celebrity, an amateur comic who did dead-on political impressions, occasionally performing at local comedy clubs. Cooper had just started on the White House beat for Time and wasn’t accustomed to dealing with Rove. Earlier in the week, Cooper had called Rove’s office, leaving a message that he wanted to speak about welfare reform, and had not heard back. But this morning, Cooper’s phone call was more pressing. Time was preparing a cover story on the major event of the week: the White House’s acknowledgment, triggered by the Wilson op-ed, that it had misstated a key piece of Iraq weapons intelligence.

  Cooper called the White House switchboard and was transferred to Rove’s office. The woman who answered the phone said she wasn’t sure if Rove was there; then she said, “Hang on,” and Cooper was put through. The conversation was brief. Rove insisted he was talking on “deep background,” which meant he couldn’t be identified as a White House official or quoted but that the information he provided could be used. When Cooper told him, “I’m writing on Wilson,” Rove interrupted, “Don’t get too far out on Wilson.” He proceeded to explain why. Rove then ended the conversation with a curious remark: “I’ve already said too much.”

  As soon as he hung up the phone, Cooper, at 11:07 A.M., banged out an e-mail to Michael Duffy, the bureau chief, summarizing the conversation:

  Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation…his big warning…don’t get too far out on Wilson…says that the DCIA [director of central intelligence, George Tenet] didn’t authorize the trip and that Cheney didn’t authorize the trip. It was, KR said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues, who authorized the trip. not only the genesis of the trip is flawed ans [sic] suspect, but so is the report. he implied strongly there’s still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger…some of this is going to be dclassified [sic] in the coming days, KR said. don’t get too far out in front, he warned then he bolted…will include in next file…

  please don’t source to rove or even WH but have TB [Time reporter Tim Burger] check out with Harlow.

  Cooper was being flip. “Double super secret background” wasn’t an actual journalistic code; it was a reference to the scene in the film Animal House when John Belushi’s unruly fraternity was placed on “double secret probation.” That one joke aside, Cooper knew he had learned something hot during his short talk with Rove: the White House was disclosing to him that Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer and had arranged the controversial trip that had caused the current storm. Right after sending the e-mail to Duffy, he sent another to Dickerson in Africa: call me on a landline.

  Dickerson was in Nigeria when he got the e-mail and immediately phoned Cooper, who was excited. “The fact that he had gotten to Rove and had gotten Rove to dish—this was his second week on the job…it was a powerful deal,” Dickerson later said. The two Time reporters compared notes and saw that several White House officials were pushing the same line—there was something odd about Wilson’s trip and how it had come about. But Cooper had received an extra piece of information from Rove: Wilson’s wife was the story. This was real news, Cooper and Dickerson figured—and it seemed to cut against Wilson. Suddenly, for Dickerson, the dots connected. “It felt like the ultimate blow against Wilson’s credibility,” Dickerson later said. He and Cooper agreed they would each send dispatches to their editors reporting that the White House was going after Wilson hard.

  Later that afternoon, Cooper summarized what he had, or thought he had, in a file he sent for the week’s cover story:

  A startling charge from a senior administration official that we need to handle with some caution…. The senior administration official warns that we shouldn’t get too far ahead of ourselves on Wilson. The official says that Wilson was not sent by the director of the CIA or by Dick Cheney and when it comes out who sent him, it will be embarrassing. When I pressed the official, he said it was somebody at the agency involved in WMD, Wilson’s wife. This guy was not an emissary, the source claimed. His report is nowhere near the truth, the official added; in fact it may be totally wrong. The Iraqis, this person said, probably were seeking Niger uranium. He said the documents will be declassified in the next few days and epople [sic] will see a different side to Wilson.

  Rove, who went further with Cooper than he had with Novak, had passed Cooper a tip that disclosed classified information: the fact that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA. And he had indicated more developments on the Niger story were on the way.

  ROVE might indeed have felt he had said too much to Cooper. He was rushing to get out of the office early that day to leave for a family vacation. But just before he left, at 11:55 A.M., he typed a short e-mail to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that contained a different (somewhat sanitized) version of his conversation with Cooper. The e-mail, in full, read:

  Matt Cooper called to give me a heads up that he’s got a welfare reform story coming.

  When he finished his brief heads-up, he immediately launched into Niger/isn’t this damaging/hasn’t the President been hurt? I didn’t take the bait but said, if I were him, I wouldn’t get TIME far out in front on this.

  No mention of Valerie
Wilson. No mention of her employment at the CIA. No mention of Joe Wilson or his trip. In this account of the conversation, Rove hadn’t said much at all.

  LATE on Friday afternoon, the CIA sent its statement—written in Tenet’s name—to the White House, and it was faxed to Air Force One in Africa. The statement was hedged and more equivocal than Bush officials had anticipated—and it even undercut the White House’s claim that the whole Niger mess had been the CIA’s fault. When senior White House officials saw it that afternoon, they did double-takes. “Well this is not what we were expecting,” one NSC official recalled saying.

  The statement began in a no-nonsense fashion: The CIA had approved the State of the Union speech. “I am responsible for the approval process in my agency,” Tenet said. “These sixteen words should never have been included in the text written for the President.” Then Tenet’s statement noted, “For perspective, a little history is in order.”

  But in recounting that history, Tenet’s statement, drafted by Harlow, emphasized the CIA’s repeated warnings about the Niger charge. It mentioned that in the fall of 2002, when the British wanted to refer to the Niger claim in their white paper, the CIA had “expressed reservations about its inclusion.” It stated that CIA officials had told members of Congress that they disagreed with the British on the Niger charge. It pointed out that the NIE had not relied on the uranium-in-Africa charge for its judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. It even noted that the NIE had included the INR’s “alternate view” stating that the Niger charge was “highly dubious.”