Mary McCarthy's yellowcake connection

Douglas Hanson:

CIA officer Mary McCarthy was fired for leaking a possibly trumped-up story about a secret network of CIA-run prisons in Europe. Ms. McCarthy’s pattern of political donations, her Clinton administration White House service, and her extensive network of ties to other important Clintonista figures has set off a blogstorm of data mining and speculation.

One aspect of her background so far comparatively unexamined is her West African uranium connection. She served in a key government position concerned with West African nations producing yellowcake uranium at the same time that Joseph Wilson was working in the area. The two may be considered members of the “yellowcake community” within the Clinton national security apparatus of the 1990s.

There are more questions than answers for the moment, but yellowcake uramium is not only of strategic importance for WMD puposes, it is also a highly profitable commodity traded under UN supervision and restrictions, a set of circumstances known to produce extraordinary opportunities for both profit and corruption, as in Oil-for-Food. These comparatively still waters may run deep. Investigators equipped with both subpoena power and security clearance may be called for.

Mary McCarthy held positions in both African and Latin American analysis desks at Langley while Wilson was U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic from 1992 to 1995. Gabon was a producer of yellowcake uranium. Wilson’s powerful position in Gabon from 1992 to 1995 raises questions about his official trip to Niger to discredit President Bush’s claim that Iraq had sought quantities of uranium from Africa.

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There is more. Reasons for concern keep overwhelming the denails at this point. There are many reasons to believe we are unlikely to know soon what all the facts are, because of the secrecy of the CIA and the liklihood that lawyers will advise McCarthy to stand mute.