Joe Wilson, imbedded: his fibs have infiltrated the media, and the media should know better

Some journalistic frauds are big and explosive, like the Jayson Blair scandal. They make headlines and generate a lot of interest, but they do little harm outside the news organizations they affect. For instance, Blair's fabricated reporting on the D.C. sniper murders did not permanently corrupt the public's knowledge of the case. It was a big fraud with a big correction, after which everyone--except those of us who make a living writing about the media!--moved on.

Other journalistic frauds are more subtle--that is, the fraud occurs through the endless repetition of false information in the background paragraphs that supplement breaking news reports on a constantly developing stow. These frauds are much more harmful to the public's knowledge of a particular incident than the big frauds, because the repetition of the false information gives it the appearance of fact.

As special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the disclosure of a CIA officer's identity has developed, national news organizations have allowed or perpetrated such a fraud. At issue is the officer's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration's handling of pre-war intelligence led administration officials to leak his wife's CIA affiliation to the press. Several false tales that Wilson told as part of his criticism have become stock paragraphs in the background sections of stories about Fitzgerald's investigation.

These stories normally lead with the most current developments--lately, that's been the indictment of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, for obstruction of justice and perjury. Then these stories include several background paragraphs to tell the reader unfamiliar with the case what it is all about.

This is what those paragraphs should say: After Cheney heard reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger, he asked the CIA to check them out. This was in February 2002. Valerie Plame, who worked at the CIA, suggested her husband Joseph Wilson for the trip based on his experience as an ambassador in Africa. He reported back to the CIA that it was unlikely that Niger had ever agreed to sell uranium to Saddam. But he also reported that an Iraqi envoy had approached the prime minister of Niger in the late 1990s seeking "expanded commercial relations." The prime minister--by this point the former prime minister--told Wilson that he took this to mean the Iraqis wanted to purchase uranium: Niger's principal export. Because Iraq was under U.N. sanctions at the time, he turned the Iraqis down.

This report from Wilson matched British intelligence reports that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger. Nevertheless, the CIA decided that Wilson's report didn't significantly add to the intelligence, and so they did not include anything from it in subsequent intelligence products. Nor was Cheney briefed on Wilson's findings.

In October 2002, the State Department discovered that the intelligence reports that had prompted Cheney's request were based on forged documents. The British intelligence reports, however, had nothing to do with the forgeries. They were based on Iraq's attempt to negotiate a uranium sale with Niger in the late 1990s, which Wilson had also reported.

By that point, many--but not all--in the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that Iraq had at least attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush cited the British intelligence, stating, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Shortly after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq--as teams searching for forbidden weapons in Iraq began to come up empty-handed--leaks started to seep out of the CIA accusing the White House of exaggerating the intelligence on WMD in Iraq. Against this backdrop, Joseph Wilson started making claims to the press that had no basis in fact.

Claim No. 1: In May 2003, Wilson began telling reporters that he knew that Saddam did not purchase uranium from Niger because the documents that occasioned his inquiry were forgeries. These reporters wrote that a "former ambassador" had reported the forged documents to the CIA after his trip in early 2002. But Wilson could not have known the documents were forged in early 2002. The United States did not receive them until late 2002--eight months after Wilson's trip. During an inquiry into pre-war intelligence, Wilson told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he may have "misspoken." He has since said that he never claimed to have reported the forged documents to the CIA.

Claim No. 2: Wilson told these same journalists that his report had reached the vice president's office. That also turned out to be false. The CIA never briefed Cheney on Wilson's findings. The intelligence committee found that Wilson's assertion was nothing more than a claim based on an assumption.