http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=peretz072104 The New Republic DAILY EXPRESS Turning Tale by Martin Peretz TNR Online Post date: 07.21.04
The tale spun by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that Iraq did not ever try to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger is now in the process of unraveling. And, of course, the phalanx of anti-war journalists is desperately trying to stop the bust-up. But it can't be done. The flying apart began with two stories in the Financial Times (London), one on June 28, the other on July 4. Relying on information ultimately sourced to three European intelligence services--none of them British and one of them that had monitored clandestine uranium smuggling to Iraq over three years--Mark Huband reported that the network also serviced or was to service Libya, Iran, China, and North Korea. A tell-tale element of the story is that the mines in Niger from which several thousand tons of uranium had been extracted and sold were owned by French companies. Apparently, after a time, they had abandoned the mines as economically unviable. But, as a counter-proliferation expert told Huband, this does not mean that extraction stopped. In any case, Lord Butler's altogether independent panel in the United Kingdom concluded that Tony Blair's claim about Hussein being in the market for uranium was "well-founded." These are the same claims made by George W. Moreover, the U.S. Senate report undercuts Wilson's very believability. I myself had wondered why the CIA had been so dumb--such dumbness is something to which we should have long ago become accustomed!--as to send a low-level diplomat to check on yellowcake sales from Niger to Iraq when it should have dispatched a real spook. Well, it turns out that a "real spook" had recommended him to her boss, that spook being Valerie Plame, who happens also to be Wilson's wife. He has long denied that she had anything to do with his going to Niger and that, alas, was a lie. It appears, in fact, that this is the sole reason he was sent. Still, in a lot of dining rooms where I am a guest here, there is outrage that someone in the vice president's office "outed" Ms. Plame, as though everybody in Georgetown hadn't already known she was under cover, so to speak. Under cover, but not really. One guest even asserted that someone in the vice president's office is surely guilty of treason, no less--an offense this person certainly wouldn't have attributed to the Rosenbergs or Alger Hiss, Daniel Ellsberg or Philip Agee. But for the person who confirmed for Robert Novak what he already knew, nothing but high crimes would do. I confess: I do not like Sandy Berger; and I have not liked him since the first time we met, long ago during the McGovern campaign, not because of his politics since I more or less shared them then, but for his hauteur. He clearly still has McGovernite politics, which means, in my mind, at least, that he believes there is no international dispute that can't be solved by the U.S. walking away from it. No matter. Still, here's his story about the filched classified materials dealing with the foiled Al Qaeda millennium terrorist bombing plot from the National Archives: He inadvertently took home documents and notes about documents that he was not permitted to take from the archives; secondly, he inadvertently didn't notice the papers in his possession when he got home and actually looked at them; and, thirdly, he inadvertently discarded some of these same files so that they are now missing. Gone, in fact. One of his lawyers attributes this behavior to "sloppiness," which may better explain his career as Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser and certainly describes his presentation of self in everyday life. But it is not an explanation of his conduct in the archives or, for that matter, at home. Personnel at the archives actually noticed him stuffing his pockets with papers as he left, which is how the FBI found out about this bizarre tale in the first place. Inadvertence, then, doesn't do it either. Maybe Sandy wanted souvenirs from his career in the White House that was punctuated by so many catastrophes for the United States. Nonetheless, he has had ambitions tied to John Kerry's, ambitions that clash with those of Richard Holbrooke and Joe Biden, who decisively do not have McGovernite politics. But Berger did run the Kerry foreign policy team at the writing of the Democratic Party platform a few weeks ago (when the only opposition, easily pacified, came from a handful of Dennis Kucinich loyalists) and has been deeply involved in crafting how the candidate presents himself on these issues. So my question is: Did Berger, who knew that he was under scrutiny since last fall, alert Kerry to the combustible fact that he was the subject of a criminal probe by the Justice Department and the FBI? My guess is not. Kerry is far too smart, too responsible to have kept him around had he known. But if Kerry didn't know, it tells you a lot about Berger, too much, really. A more important question, of course, is: What was contained in the papers that Berger snatched? The answer to that question might answer another. Maybe Clinton's top national security aide didn't want others to see what they documented. . . . Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief of TNR.
