Every Redaction Tells a Story

I looking forward to eRiposte's posting at the Left Coaster and/or Firedoglake focusing on the role of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's smokescreen with regard to the Niger forgeries that were the catalyist to the whole Plame/Wilson/Libby saga. He/she has become done amazing legwork in looking under a lot of rocks and the documents released in conjunction with the trial of Scooter Libby have been a good source of fuel for this developing story. Here's a second SSCI redaction decision that warrants investigation IMHO. (See earlier post here).

One of the documents released last week (an apparent intelligence community memo that was forwarded to the Office of the Vice President in early June 2003 contains the following paragraph (click to magnify): [source pdf]

eRiposte explains in detail here

A reading of paragraph six makes makes it obvious that the "sensitive source" being referred to here is former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (and the CIA report of his findings from his 2002 trip to Niger). However, the significant redaction in the end is clearly masking one of the two streams of reporting. Yet, Paragraph 24 of the same DX64 memo makes it clear that the U.S. Government also handed over the forged Niger documents to the IAEA:

24. [….] The [4 February 2003] note [from WINPAC to the US Mission to the IAEA and UNMOVIC] contained copies of the original language documents obtained by Embassy Rome [from Panorama reporter Elisabetta Burba].

We also know this to be the case from the Phase I SSCI report that was published in the following year (2004), which explicitly identified the two streams of reporting as being:

… the original CIA intelligence reports from the foreign government service and the CIA intelligence report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger… [page 68]

But the SSCI report has a puzzling redaction as well. While the DX64 memo has some information pertaining to the second stream of reporting redacted, the SSCI report redacted the mention of "two streams"!

Now I wonder why they did that? Here's the SSCI section (click to magnify)[source]

Now I'm no authority on this case but I find it hard to believe there wasn't a good bit of discussion by the SSCI staffers involved in preparing this document for the "Phase 1" report. eRiposte makes a pretty compelling case as follows:

In other words, "two streams of reporting" was changed to "[DELETED] of reporting" in the SSCI report.

Why did the SSCI report redact the phrase "two streams"? Past experience indicates that this type of redaction is very strategic in nature and is highly significant. For example, in the Appendix, I provide an example of another eerily similar redaction in the SSCI report whose significance I figured out and was subsequently confirmed by a declassified INR memo.

I think there's a simple explanation for the redaction of "two streams". After all, if you read the SSCI report carefully, it is hard not to notice that there were actually three individual items mentioned in the SSCI report's discussion of the U.S. Government's communication to the IAEA:

* The CIA report on Ambassador Wilson's trip from March 2002
* The original CIA Niger intel reports based on the foreign government service (SISMI) reports to the CIA in late 2001/early 2002
* Copies of forged Niger documents received from Elisabetta Burba in October 2002

Hence, if the SSCI report had called these out as being part of "two streams" of reporting, it would have made it very clear to readers that the U.S. Government knew that the original CIA Niger intel reports (echoing SISMI's allegations) were based on the forged Niger documents - i.e., that these constituted one and the same "stream" of reporting and that the Niger documents were merely the "evidence" that the original SISMI/CIA reports were based on. This is a fact that the Phase I SSCI report did its best to mask in its narrative and the impression that a casual reader would get reading the report is that the U.S. Government never really connected the original Niger reporting from SISMI directly and exclusively to the forged Niger documents. This misimpression is what misled some people to think, for the longest time, that the Niger forgeries were somehow independent of the intel from SISMI on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal.

I'm just scratching the surface of this story here and I'll have to reserve additional analysis for a later post, but let me tentatively close the loop by pointing out that the DX64 memo indicates that the CIA knew no later than October 2002 that the forged documents were basically the source of the original Niger reporting:

11. [REDACTED] On 10 October 2002, Embassy Rome reported on a meeting from the previous day with a journalist from the Italian magazine Panorama. The journalist provided the Embassy with a copy of documents alleging Iraq and Niger had reached an agreement in July 2000 for the purchase of uranium. […] Embassy Rome indicated that it had learned from CIA that the documents provided by the journalist were the subject of the CIA report issued on 5 February 2002, as described in paragraph three. […] The Directorate of Intelligence did not request or place a high-priority on obtaining the actual documents, at this time, [REDACTED SENTENCE].

Here's my point: IF THERE IS A BENIGN EXPLANATION FOR THESE CONVENIENT REDACTIONS, SOMEONE FROM THE SSCI STAFF NEEDS TO PROVIDE IT UNDER OATH! These people are paid by the taxpayers of America, not the Republican Party. I hope to develop a list of SSCI staffers during the relevent period. Hopefully subpoenas will follow.

As eRiposte pointed out he has only scratched the surface of this story. I'm already convinced there was political mischief afoot. In order to prevent such chicanery in the future, an example must be made. If anyone wants to offer a benign explanation for these redactions, they are invited to do so in the comments.