Valerie planned Joes trip to Niger before Cheney request

Byron York:

For the last two weeks, a number of Republicans in Washington — in the administration, on Capitol Hill, and in the intelligence community — have been watching closely as the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Lewis Libby unfolds in federal court. In particular, those Republicans have been poring over dozens of documents released as evidence in the case. Much of what they’ve seen is old stuff, things they’ve known about for years. But two documents are new, to most eyes at least, and they may significantly change our understanding of how the entire Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame Wilson-Niger affair began.

The accepted version of events is that Vice President Dick Cheney got things started when he asked for information about possible Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. After that request, CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson suggested sending her husband to look into the question, and after that, the CIA flew Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate. But the new documents suggest that Mrs. Wilson suggested her husband for the trip before the vice president made his request. In other words, Joseph Wilson’s visit to Niger, which everyone believes was undertaken at the behest of the vice president, was actually in the works before Dick Cheney asked his now-famous question. And if that is true, our current understanding of the chronology of events is wrong.

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According to the Senate report, Valerie Plame Wilson sent her e-mail on February 12, 2002 — the day before the vice president was briefed on the African uranium matter. The discrepancy between the two dates seems glaring, but was not included in the Senate report. That is because, according to a source familiar with the committee’s investigation, the CIA did not include the document in the materials it turned over to the committee. Senate investigators apparently never knew the exact date of the vice president’s request, so they never knew it came after Plame’s e-mail.

What does the new information mean? On February 12, 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency released — inside the government, not publicly — a report covering the Africa uranium issue; its title said that Niger had “signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad.” CIA officials told Senate investigators the report spurred requests for information from both the State Department and the Department of Defense. Knowledgeable sources speculate — and they stress, they are speculating — that those inquiries from State and Defense were made on the 12th, the day the Defense Intelligence Agency report was sent around, and that Valerie Plame Wilson, in suggesting her husband be sent to investigate, was reacting to those requests, and not to the vice president’s question, which came the next day. In this new version of events, Dick Cheney was the last guy to request more information, not the first; the notion that his request started the whole affair seems wrong.

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This new evidence suggest that much of what Joe Wilson has said about why and when he was sent to Niger has been wrong, or in the words of leftist a lie. Perhaps that is another reason why he has wanted to avoid having to take the stand in the trial.