Per conversation with Jason last week, he told me that he was coming out with this story. This was emailed to me. Thank you Jason for all you do! Cheers!
Waxman Threatens to Subpoena CIA's Plame Documents
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Monday 14 May 2007
Congressman Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Government Affairs and Oversight Committee, has threatened to use his subpoena power to obtain documents from the CIA related to events five years ago in which former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to probe allegations that Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from the African country.
In a letter sent Friday to CIA Director Michael Hayden, a copy of which was obtained by Truthout, Waxman said he wants the spy agency to declassify a February 12, 2002 memo and turn it over to his committee, which is vigorously investigating lax security measures in the White House that led senior members of the Bush administration to disseminate classified information about Plame's undercover CIA status to the media. Waxman set a May 18 deadline for the CIA to turn over the materials.
"On March 26, Chairman Waxman sent you a letter requesting documents relating to the accuracy of testimony by an unnamed [counter proliferation division (CPD)] reports officer cited in the Senate report," states the letter sent to Hayden, which is signed by Waxman and the Oversight Committee's ranking minority member Tom Davis (R-Virginia). "According to Ms. Wilson's testimony, information provided to the Senate by this CPD reports officer was 'twisted and distorted' to support the inaccurate claim that Ms. Wilson had suggested her husband ... for the mission."
"Ms. Wilson told the committee that the CPD reports officer drafted a memo to correct the record, but the CIA did not allow him to send it," Waxman's letter further added. "She also told the committee that the officer asked to be re-interviewed by the Senate, but the CIA denied this request."
Plame Wilson, who broke her long-standing public silence and testified before Waxman's committee in March, said she had nothing to do with selecting her husband for the fact-finding mission to Niger. In her testimony, Plame Wilson told members of Congress that a report issued in 2004 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence claiming that she was behind her husband's trip was untrue.
Plame Wilson said the Senate committee received a "twisted and distorted" report by an unnamed officer in her division who claimed Plame Wilson was responsible for her husband's trip to Niger. Portions of the CIA officer's memo were quoted in the Senate Intelligence Committee report and suggested that Wilson's trip was a boondoggle set up by Plame.
The CIA's public affairs officer did not return calls for comment. But according to the letter Waxman sent to Hayden, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, Christopher Walker, told Waxman's staff on May 3 that any documents the Oversight Committee needs pertaining to Ambassador Wilson's trip should be addressed to the House and Senate's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Those "are our oversight committees," Walker wrote, responding to Waxman and Davis's request for documents. So, "Any further questions ... should be addressed to those committees."
Waxman has subpoenaed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to compel her to testify about her role in the "16 words" controversy. Specifically, Waxman wants Rice to testify about whether she knew in advance that the intelligence was false. Rice said she would not honor the subpoena. For more than four years, Rice has said she could not recall receiving any oral or written warnings from the CIA about Iraq's interest in uranium from Niger as being unreliable. But Tenet said he personally warned Rice in late 2002 that the Niger claims were bogus. Still, despite the previous warnings Rice was given, she penned an op-ed on January 23, 2003, five days after Bush's State of the Union address, claiming that Iraq was actively trying "to get uranium from abroad."
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