Foley’s testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee does not go into great detail about his discussions of the Niger reports with Fleitz and/or Bolton (at one point his testimony went “off the record” while this was being discussed), but clearly he discussed this matter extensively with either Fleitz or Bolton or both.

Apparently one of the things to incite the ire of Bolton and Fleitz in which Foley was involved, he thought “early in ’03,” was an October 2002 CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which, among other things, characterized “claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa” as “highly dubious.” Bolton was not pleased, and he let Foley, through Fleitz, know it. (Fleitz also testified before the Foreign Relations Committee staff, but it was a contentious session in which Fleitz either pleaded poor recall or refused outright to answer many questions). George Bush had originally intended to include reference to the Niger Yellowcake reports in an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, but that reference was removed from the speech after George Tenet personally persuaded then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to omit it according to the Washington Post.

In spite of that, Bolton himself ignored the October NIE (which was partially declassified in July 2003) in a December 19, 2002 fact sheet issued by the State Department taking issue with Iraq’s December 7, 2002 Weapons Declaration. The State fact sheet was requested and overseen by John Bolton, and it included the claim that the report omitted that Iraq had recently sought to obtain uranium from Niger as if that was an established fact.

Not long afterward Alan Foley, again according to the July 18, 2003 Washington Post, was pressured to allow the now-famous “sixteen words” into the State of the Union address:

If Robert Joseph pressured Foley to sign-off on the “sixteen words,” it is a virtual certainty that John Bolton was in the loop. Joseph is a long-time associate of Bolton’s with a very similar Neocon-rooted philosophy. When Bolton moved on the United Nations it was Robert Joseph who stepped into Bolton’s former job at the State Department.

If Joseph Wilson’s sources are correct it was not long after this that the White House turned its attention toward Wilson. Wilson claims he was told that in March of 2003 it was decided at a White House meeting in which Scooter Libby was present to do a “work up” on Wilson, explaining that “a work up means to run an intel op to glean all the information you can.” Wilson later concluded that the group was the White House Iraq Group. WHIG was basically a marketing operation set up to sell the invasion of Iraq to the public and the media, and its members included Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Andrew Card, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condoleeza Rice, Stephen Hadley, and Scooter Libby. Perhaps significantly, it was also about this time, March 7, 2003, that IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei announced that the documents purporting to prove that Iraq had sought to purchase Yellowcake from Niger were crude forgeries.

As far as we know, the first time Valerie Wilson’s name ever appeared in a memo was a June 10, 2003 document which has been widely reported on, but which is still classified. It was written by Carl W. Ford, then Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research for then Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, and it recalled the February 19, 2002 CIA meeting at which it was discussed whether to send Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the reports of attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake. Reportedly the memo said that Valerie Wilson had played a major role in the discussions, but CIA sources have maintained to the media that she merely introduced her husband and then left the meeting. In any event, the fact that the memo was not written until some fifteen months after the meeting had occurred suggests a political motive behind its creation. Months later on December 26, 2003, The Washington Post would report that the “CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed.” “On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA, posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon News questioner asks: ‘An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?’ “ [the author of that article was none other than Jeff Gannon, who was later outed as a non-accredited “journalist” (and former male escort) whose reports were closely tied to the Republican agenda]. If The New York Times is correct, it was only two days after the drafting of the June 10, 2003 memo that Scooter Libby first learned of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson.

We do not know who directed Marc Grossman to request the June 10th memo, but it seems a good guess that it was John Bolton. At the time he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, and WMD came under his area of jurisdiction. After Wilson went public in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 Colin Powell’s deputy, Richard L. Armitage requested the CIA to prepare an account of the Wilson trip. Rather than forwarding the June 10th memo, a new memo was prepared readdressed to Powell, but based primarily on the original. Clearly the original memo was withheld from Powell, and the new one was prepared rather than supply him with the one prepared a month earlier. Had Powell been belatedly provided with the June memo it is likely he would have wanted to know why he was only then seeing it. But was Bolton in a position to block important State Department memos from getting to Powell? Apparently he was, and often did. The Washington Post reported on April 18, 2005 that “John R. Bolton… often blocked then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and, on one occasion, his successor, Condoleezza Rice,… from receiving information vital to U.S. strategies… according to current and former officials who have worked with Bolton.”

Ironically, the author of the June 10th memo would later come back to haunt John Bolton when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was a “bully” who abused his authority and power.

There is no proof, so far as we know, that John Bolton or Fred Fleitz ever discussed the subject of Valerie Plame or Valerie Wilson with Alan Foley, but one cannot help but wonder if it is likely that the matter never came up. That Fleitz and Bolton were both intimately involved in pushing the Niger Yellowcake rumors is undeniable. It is also established that both had very frequent contact with Alan Foley, who certainly knew about Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger and his relationship to his colleague Valerie Plame.

One can’t help but suspect that Patrick Fitzgerald has also connected these dots, and is asking similar questions.