Follow the Yellowcake Road

By Scott Horton

With the Libby trial concluded, one of the remaining, unanswered mysteries goes to the story that launched it: the fraudulent tale of Iraqi efforts to secure yellowcake uranium from Niger. The tale leads to the Italian secret service and in most recountings it is heavily populated with names closely associated with Vice President Cheney–Machiavelli scholar and star Neocon Michael Ledeen, for instance, and Doug Feith’s deputy Lawrence Franklin. Indeed, as the Washington Post's Peter Eisner recently pointed out, it's amazing what we still don’t know about this affair–and it points to a concerted and sustained effort by the Bush Administration to keep the lid on.

Congressional oversight bloodhound Henry Waxman is on the case. He has sent a series of carefully crafted letters to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requesting that she explain her role in the chain of events that led to the notorious eighteen words getting into the Bush State of the Union Address, whether she was aware of the CIA's disavowal, and requesting her explanation of an op-ed she wrote making a reference to the same bogus contention. Rice’s response has been a curt brush-off passed through an aide, with non-responsive documents enclosed. And this was topped by a masterful display of faux irritation from State Department spokesman Sean McCormack which was either dissembling or ignorant of the underlying communications.

It's high time for the yellowcake trail to be followed to its conclusion. The obvious question is why, considering that it is now clear that the Vice President’s office knew the yellowcake materials were bogus, the materials were so heavily relied upon. Indeed, the question that keeps suggesting itself is what hand the White House had in working these materials into the intelligence reservoir in the first place.