INR analyst at CIA dicuss Wilson's intelligence-gathering trip source of the Plame memo

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 21, 2005; A01

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation

...

written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

...

Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife.

...

The memo was drafted June 10, 2003, for Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who asked to be brought up to date on INR's opposition to the White House view that Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

...

It records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson's trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Attached to the INR memo were the notes taken by the senior INR analyst who attended the 2002 meeting at the CIA.

Comments\Summary
It is the memo that results from this meeting and inevitably ends up taking a trip aboard Air Force One to Africa carried aboard by Secretary of State Colin Powell. On this trip to Africa is where Ari admits to a limited press corps that the information in the State of the Union should not have been included in this speech.

It is also is this memo that lead to the shut down of an entire covert CIA operation dedicated to the very topic the White House was having difficulty proving. This covert group under the cover of energy consultants infiltrated business and government targets in the middle east targeting the finance of terrorism and proliferation of WMD. These are the very people who would have best understood the capabilities of the Iraqi government, because they were the boots on the ground. This group was exposed by first publicly identifying one of it's NOC.(Non Official Cover) agents.

The agent is the wife of a very publicly known ambassador. Who used his contacts at the request of the CIA to confirm it would be difficult for Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger. Perhaps what is more astounding then the attention given to the ambassador and his wife is that the three page memo only makes mention of her in two sentences.

The bulk of this memo was intended to restate the position of the State Departments Intellegence Service (INR), that Niger was not selling uranium to Iraq. They had previously objected to the grounds of the ambassadors’ trip because they had already disproved allegations that Iraq was attempting to purchase the uranium.

It is not clear to me if these are the same analyst John Bolton attempted to get fired. It seems a man with Bolton's polarizing personality would be effective in intimidating underling analysts. Bolton is currently been nominated to become the ambassador to the United Nations. The nomination is stuck in committee because the White House has not forwarded requested materials with regards to Bolton’s work at the State Department.

This is not the first time the White House has attempted to gloss over the details in making claims about Iraq WMD capabilities. They had attempted to turn a pale of road apples into a bouquet of flowers before when they tried to connect aluminum tubes to the process of enriching uranium.

Condi Rice after an appearance on Larry King two months earlier where she was candid that we are able to keep weapons from Iraq/Saddam, on Sept 8, 2001 she said about the aluminum tubes:
...

"only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

...
This shift comes in contrast to an energy department publication which stated on August 17, 2001
...

A team of scientists at the Energy Department published a secret Technical Intelligence Note raising doubts about the aluminum tubes use in centrifuges. “[It] is credible but unlikely, and a rocket production is much more likely end use for these tubes.” This was concluded because the tubes were too narrow, too thick and had a special weather coating.

...
So against the advice of the experts we pay to advise Ms. Rice and the White House they decide that the details regarding the aluminum tubes are less important then pointing their finger at Iraq in making claims about WMD that had previously been disproven.