Tuesday, October 25, 2005

A timeline trying to figure out why the campaign against Wilson

Washington Monthly - Political Animal
    February 2002: The CIA receives "verbatim text" from Italian intelligence of some documents claiming that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. Joe Wilson goes to Niger to investigate this claim and reports back that it seems highly unlikely.

    October 2002: State Department intelligence agency (INR) gets an actual copy of the Niger docs and immediately concludes that they're bogus. However, nobody outside the government knows this.

    January 2003: George Bush gives SOTU address, claiming that Iraq has sought uranium from Africa.

    March 2003: IAEA publicly announces the Niger docs are forgeries.

    May/June 2003: Based on anonymous sourcing from Wilson, Kristof and Pincus report on the Niger story, mistakenly saying that "the envoy" had debunked the docs back in February 2002.

    July 6, 2003: Wilson publishes his op-ed.

    July 11, 2003: CIA director George Tenet admits that Bush shouldn't have included the uranium claim in the SOTU.

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