Today's Pincus and VandeHei Article
Mr Marshall on TPM has some words about today's article in the Post by Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei and he has expanded on the theme of the attack created in the White House against Wilson and his wife.
This got me to read the article, and one small detail grabbed my attention:
"Using background conversations with at least three journalists and other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post."
To me, this answers a couple of questions that have bugged me about the story as it developed. First is this "Valerie Wilson" vs "Valerie Plame" thing. If there was this confusion with a trip three years previous, I can see a likelihood that the documents referring to this earlier trip may refer to "Valerie Plame" and, incidentally, giving somebody a wonderful rush because it does talk about her setting up a trip to Niger (just the wrong one). But more importantly: the fact that there was confusion over her name and which trip shows that the White House likely had this three year old document, and was definitely after anything on Wilson and his wife. There was more information available to them than has been let on. Not just that June 10 memo and the subsequent copy that went on that trip to Africa (and may have been seen by anybody on the plane). They had other documents, and this means there was a conscious and purposeful action taken on their part to put together this campaign (conspiracy?). The gathering of more than one document from the CIA tells me they had to know she was covert, and it just didn't matter enough to them.
