HAT TRICKS

Just when I wanted an example of wingnut mendacity, The Hat comes through again. He writes about the Plame case:


the conclusion I and others drew from this tawdry business when it was first made public what seems like eons ago. Wilson was chosen (by his "cloak-and-dagger" wife and by the CIA) for the Niger mission precisely because he could be relied upon to come back with nothing.

This is the usual BS we get from Roger L. "The Hat" Simon. The CIA felt that there WAS something to the report about Iraq trying to obtain uranium from Niger and had no motivation to change their assessment by picking an idiot to look into the matter. It was the State Dept.'s INR that had doubts.

From the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, Chapter II, Niger:

IC analysts at the CIA and the DIA were more impressed with the detail and substance of the second report. One analyst noted that the report provided much more information than they had seen previously in similar reporting about alleged uranium transactions to other countries. INR analysts continued to doubt the accuracy of the reporting, again because they thought Niger would be unwilling and unable to sell uranium to Iraq and because they thought Iraq would be unlikely to risk such a transaction when they were "bound to be caught." Because of these doubts, an INR analyst asked the CIA whether the source of the report could submit to a polygraph. SENTENCE DELETED A CIA analyst also inquired about the source and says he was told by the CIA's DO that the report was from a "very credible source."