[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 137 (Tuesday, October 25, 2005)]
[House]
[Pages H9076-H9077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE VALERIE PLAME INCIDENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Hinchey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HINCHEY. Mr. Speaker, I have here a letter which I wrote last 
month, which is addressed to United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, 
who is currently conducting an investigation with regard to who it was 
who revealed the name of Valerie Wilson, who is and was an undercover 
operator for the Central Intelligence Agency, which I will enter at 
this point into the Congressional Record.


                                Congress of the United States,

                               Washington, DC, September 15, 2005.
     Re request to expand investigation.

     U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald,
     Justice Department,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear United States Attorney Fitzgerald: We hereby request 
     that you expand your investigation regarding who in the Bush 
     Administration revealed to the press that Valerie Wilson, the 
     wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was an undercover agent for 
     the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). We believe that 
     expansion should include investigating the Administration's 
     false and fraudulent claims in January 2003 that Iraq had 
     sought uranium for a nuclear weapon, which the Administration 
     offered as one of the key grounds to justify the war against 
     Iraq.
       President Bush made two uranium claims, one in his State of 
     the Union Address to Congress and another in a report that he 
     submitted to Congress concerning Iraq, and National Security 
     Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, 
     and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made three other 
     uranium claims. We request that you investigate whether such 
     claims violated two criminal statutes, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001 
     and 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, that prohibit making false and 
     fraudulent statements to Congress and obstructing the 
     functions of Congress.
       You have broad discretion to conduct this investigation. 
     The issues we raise are directly related to your current 
     investigation and clearly fall under your authority. The 
     desire to discredit the information provided by Ambassador 
     Wilson regarding the lack of evidence to support the 
     Administration's contention that Iraq sought uranium from 
     Niger is the nearly-universally accepted motive behind the 
     leak of Mrs. Wilson's identity. In order to fully investigate 
     the disclosure of an undercover CIA agent's identity, it is 
     clear that you should fully investigate the reasons for that 
     disclosure.
       As we outline below, we believe that members of the 
     Administration may have violated laws governing 
     communications with Congress with respect to assertions about 
     Iraq's nuclear capabilities. Ambassador Wilson's efforts to 
     publicly contradict these assertions seem to be the reason 
     for the undercovering of Mrs. Wilson's identity. It is very 
     likely that you would encounter these assertions during the 
     course of your investigation, and thus their legality should 
     be the subject of your investigation.


 The Administration's Claims about Iraq Seeking uranium were False And 
                               Fraudulent

       The uranium claims of the Administration in January 2003 
     that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon were shown 
     to be false because, after intensive post war investigations, 
     the Iraq Survey Group found no evidence that Iraq had sought 
     the uranium. In the months prior to the war, weapons 
     inspectors of the United Nations (U.N.) conducted extensive 
     inspections in Iraq and found no evidence that Iraq had 
     revived its nuclear weapons program. The Administration has 
     never produced any legitimate actual evidence that Iraq had 
     sought the uranium.
       The uranium claims were also fraudulent because although 
     some in the American intelligence community (including the 
     C.I.A.) may have agreed at the time with the British opinion 
     that Iraq had sought uranium, numerous people with the 
     Administration did not tell the whole truth consisting of the 
     contrary views held by the best informed U.S. intelligence 
     officials. C.I.A. Director George Tenet told the White House 
     in October 2002 that C.I.A. analysts believed the reporting 
     on the uranium claim was ``weak'' and thus the Director told 
     the White House that it should not make the claim. Later that 
     same day, the C.I.A.'s Associate Deputy Director for 
     Intelligence sent a fax to the White House stating that the 
     ``evidence [on the uranium claim] is weak.'' The National 
     Security Council (N.S.C.) believed in January 2003 that the 
     nuclear case against Iraq was weak. Secretary of State Powell 
     was told during meetings at the C.I.A. to vet his U.N. speech 
     of February 5, 2003 that there were doubts about the uranium 
     claim and he therefore kept it out of his speech for that 
     reason. The U.S. government told the U.N. on February 4, 2003 
     that it could not confirm the uranium reports.
       Furthermore, the original draft of the State of the Union 
     Address stated that ``we know that [Hussein] has recently 
     sought to buy uranium in Africa,'' but after the White House 
     consulted with the C.I.A., the White House changed the speech 
     to refer to the British view rather than the American view. 
     The final draft stated that the ``British government has 
     learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant 
     quantities of uranium from Africa.'' The parties involved 
     stated that they had no discussions about the credibility of 
     the reporting and the reason for the switch was to identify 
     the source for the uranium claim.
       However, in response to the uproar over the op-ed article 
     by Ambassador Wilson, C.I.A. Director Tenet issued a 
     statement in which he admitted that C.I.A. officials who 
     reviewed the draft of the State of the Union Address 
     containing the remarks on the Niger-Iraqi uranium deal 
     ``raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the 
     intelligence with [White House] National Security Council 
     colleagues'' and ``[s]ome of the language was changed.'' 
     Tenet stated that ``[f]rom what we know now, Agency officials 
     in the end concurred that the text in the speech was 
     factually correct--i.e. that the British government report 
     said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.''
       What this tells us is that although Administration 
     officials, informed by the highest ranking members of our own 
     intelligence operation, knew that the claim of Niger uranium 
     going to Iraq was ``weak'' and could not be confirmed, they 
     were still determined to use it in the President's address to 
     Congress and fell back on the dubious language of the British 
     report. The Administration clearly sought to cover up their 
     own officials' doubts about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and 
     hide those doubts from the Congress and the U.S. public.


                                 Motive

       A motive for making such false and fraudulent uranium 
     claims would have been to thwart Congressional and U.N. 
     efforts to delay the start of the war. Pending at the time 
     that the Administration made its uranium claims in January 
     2003 was a Congressional resolution, H. Con. Res. 2, 
     submitted by five members of Congress on January 7, 2003, 
     which expressed the sense of Congress that it should repeal 
     its earlier war resolution to allow more time for U.N. 
     weapons inspectors to finish their work. On January 24, 2003, 
     a few days prior to the State of the Union Address, 130 
     members of Congress wrote to the president encouraging him to 
     consider any request by the U.N. for additional time for 
     weapons inspections. On February 5, 2003, 30 members of 
     Congress submitted another resolution, H.J. Res. 20, to 
     actually repeal the war resolution.
       Had it not been for the uranium claims in the State of the 
     Union Address, which sought to squelch congressional concern 
     over the impetus for the pending war, the number of sponsors 
     for H.J. Res. 20 would have been far greater. The influence 
     of the uranium claims can be seen in the fact that 130 
     members of Congress signed the letter before the State of the 
     Union Address, but only 30 sponsored H.J. Res. 20, which was 
     introduced after the speech. The Administration's uranium 
     claims thwarted the congressional efforts to delay the start 
     of the war since the Administration used the claims to 
     allege that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program--despite 
     the failure of the U.N. inspectors to find such a 
     program--and thus falsely assert that Iraq posed an 
     immediate threat that needed to be nullified without 
     further delay.
       Concerning the importance of the uranium claims, the report 
     Iraq On The Record, produced by the Minority Staff of the 
     House Committee on Government Reform, states: ``Another 
     significant component of the Administration's nuclear claims 
     was the assertion that Iraq had sought to import uranium from 
     Africa. As one of few new pieces of intelligence, this claim 
     was repeated multiple times by Administration officials as 
     proof that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons 
     program.'' A nuclear-armed Iraq was a key reason, if not the 
     most important reason, used by the Administration to justify 
     the need for a preemptive war against Iraq. Rather than allow 
     the U.N. inspectors to finish their inspections, the results 
     of which might have fueled further congressional efforts and 
     resolutions to stop the war, the Administration commenced the 
     war in March 2003.

[[Page H9077]]

   the administration's false and fraudulent uranium claims arguably 
     violated criminal laws concerning communications with congress

       The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001, prohibits 
     knowingly and willfully making false and fraudulent 
     statements to Congress in documents required by law. The two 
     uranium claims in the State of the Union Address and the 
     report to Congress concerning Iraq were false and fraudulent, 
     and are in documents that the White House submitted to 
     Congress. See House Document 108-1 and House Document 108-23. 
     The law required the president to give such reports. Article 
     II, Section 3 of the constitution requires presidents to give 
     State of the Union Addresses. Section 4 of Public Law 107-
     243, which is the Congressional resolution authorizing the 
     war against Iraq, requires the president to give reports to 
     Congress relevant to the war resolution and the president 
     submitted said report on Iraq pursuant to that law. Thus 18 
     U.S.C., Sec. 1001 was evidently violated.
       The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, prohibits 
     conspiring to defraud the United States and is applicable 
     since the Supreme Court in the case of Hammerschmidt v. 
     United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924) held that to 
     ``conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to 
     cheat the government out of property or money, but it also 
     means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful 
     government functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at 
     least by means that are dishonest.'' Senior Administration 
     officials arguably violated Section 371 because their uranium 
     claims had the effect of obstructing or interfering with the 
     function of Congress to reconsider its war resolution and to 
     allow further time for U.N. weapons inspections. If the whole 
     truth had been told, Congress may well have withdrawn the war 
     resolution or delayed the start of the war to allow further 
     U.N. weapons inspections, which would have shown what we now 
     know; that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and had 
     not sought the uranium. However, it should be noted that 
     Section 371 does not require proof that the conspiracy was 
     successful.
       Additionally, the Downing Street memos should be part of 
     the investigation as to whether one of the several ways in 
     which the Administration deliberately ``fixed'' the facts and 
     intelligence on uranium included its switch of the language 
     in the State of the Union Address to justify the war. These 
     documents provide valuable insight into the mindset of the 
     Administration the summer preceding the Iraq invasion.


                               conclusion

       The above matters are clearly related to your current 
     investigation. Ambassador Wilson's op-ed article focused on 
     the uranium claim made in the 2003 State of the Union Address 
     and he concluded that ``intelligence related to Iraq's 
     nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi 
     threat.'' You are investigating whether any laws were 
     violated when Administration officials--in order to discredit 
     Wilson's claim and/or to retaliate against him--leaked to the 
     press the fact that his wife was a CIA agent. As set forth in 
     this letter, Wilson's original charge that the Administration 
     ``twisted'' the evidence concerns matters that are just as 
     criminal as the Administration's attempts to discredit Wilson 
     and his charge by revealing the identity of Mrs. Wilson as a 
     CIA operative.
       Justice Department officials in Washington certainly have 
     the same type of conflict of interest in this matter as they 
     did in the CIA leak case, which resulted in current your 
     assignment. (See 28 CFR, Sec. 45.2(a) prohibiting Department 
     employees from matters in which they have a conflict of 
     interest).
       Thank you for your attention to this request. We look 
     forward to your response.
           Sincerely,
         Maurice D. Hinchey, William D. Delahunt, Bernard Sanders, 
           Pete Stark, George Miller, John Conyers, Jr., Richard 
           E. Neal, Martin Olav Sabo, Marcy Kaptur, Xavier 
           Becerra, Hilda L. Solis, Cynthia McKinney, Doris 
           Matsui, David Wu, Louise Slaughter, Charles B. Rangel, 
           Ed Towns, Jim McDermott, Raul M. Grijalva, Michael M. 
           Honda.
         Albert R. Wynn, Sam Farr, Lynn C. Woolsey, Tammy Baldwin, 
           Chris Cannon, Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn B. Maloney, Jim 
           Moran, Donald M. Payne, Peter J. Visclosky, Carolyn C. 
           Kilpatrick, Dennis J. Kucinich, Neil Abercrombie, Jim 
           McGovern, Maxine Waters, Luis V. Gutierrez, Sheila 
           Jackson-Lee, Barbara Lee, Frank Pallone, Jr., Wm. Lacy 
           Clay, Jose E. Serrano.

  Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this letter is to recognize, first of 
all, the importance of the investigation as to who it was who revealed 
the identity of Mrs. Wilson as an operator for the Central Intelligence 
Agency. Whoever did so violated Federal law, which went into effect in 
1968.

                              {time}  2015

  That is a very important question. An even more important question is 
why that was done. And so in the context of this letter, I and the 
other 39 Members of the House who signed this letter are asking that 
this investigation be conducted more deeply, be conducted further into 
the question as to why that revelation was made.
  To recount the events here, back in late 2002, the administration was 
making claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. And on 
the basis of those claims, it was preparing a final push asking the 
Congress to support a war against Iraq.
  Included in those weapons of mass destruction were references to 
uranium which allegedly had been imported from Niger in West Africa 
into Iraq for the purposes of constructing a nuclear weapon. The 
Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence operations within 
the Federal Government expressed serious doubts about the accuracy of 
that information with regard to enriched uranium coming out of Niger 
into Iraq.
  Nevertheless, the administration continued to press the case, telling 
the intelligence agencies over and over again to go back and look 
again, go back and look again, when the intelligence agencies found 
that they had no evidence, no substantial evidence whatsoever, that 
that uranium had been imported into Iraq from Niger.
  Finally, the Central Intelligence Agency sent a retired ambassador, 
Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate whether there was any 
prospect whatsoever that enriched uranium had been sent from Niger into 
Iraq. Mr. Wilson conducted a thorough investigation. He came back and 
reported to the Central Intelligence Agency that no such information 
was found.
  The CIA informed the White House. Nevertheless, the administration 
continued to assert weapons of mass destruction, including the 
potential for the creation of a nuclear weapon. Those assertions were 
made directly to the Congress. It is against the law, it is against 
Federal law, a criminal violation of Federal law, to misinform the 
Congress of the United States and to intentionally mislead the 
Congress.
  We believe that that has been done, and that if it had not been for 
the assertion of nuclear weapons and the belief that there were nuclear 
weapons being made in Iraq, that this Congress likely would not have 
passed the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq. If that had not 
taken place, that resolution had not been passed, we would not be 
seeing today nearly 2,000 American service men and women having been 
killed in Iraq; tens of thousands of others seriously wounded; 
hundreds, tens of thousands, perhaps as much as 100,000 Iraqis killed, 
many of them women and children, innocent civilians.
  And so this question as to why that revelation was made is seriously 
important. Furthermore, we need to look into the issue of why this 
misinformation was given to the Congress, and that ought to be done by 
the Congress. This House of Representatives ought to be conducting 
hearings now that we know there were no weapons of mass destruction in 
Iraq prior to our invasion, and that whatever evidence there might have 
been was flimsy and weak and not anything to be based on.
  Why was that done? That is a question of great seriousness presently 
before this House of Representatives, and it is not being addressed. 
The most important question of human rationality is why, why something 
was done? Was it as a result of a cabal that existed within the 
administration between powerful people who were determined to present 
information that would mislead the Congress in the way that they did? 
Because the Congress was misled, unquestionably so.
  The Government of the United States is supposed to be open and 
transparent. Decisionmaking should be subject to powerful checks and 
balances. That has not been done, and it must be done. This Congress 
must fulfill its obligations under the Constitution to investigate 
these breakages of Federal law.

                          ____________________