American Thinker’s Clarice Feldman notes the crumbling timeline in the Plame Game:

“From the outset, Joseph Wilson IV has insisted he was sent to Niger at the Vice President’s behest. As more facts about the trip became known and the Vice President vehemently denied this claim, the scenario appeared that the CIA sent him after Cheney raised a question in an intelligence report, and that the Vice President was utterly unaware of the Mission to Africa.

This notion was reinforced when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) reported that the agency managed to act remarkably quickly, approving the trip so close in time after the inquiry.

But we have just learned in the course of the Libby Trial that even that timeline is wrong:

(a) Plame recommended her husband for this trip before the vice president even asked about the report;

(b) the SSCI never knew this because the CIA never turned over her memorandum of recommendation to the committee.

Why did the agency hold back this information and allow this misstatement of fact to sit on the public record for so long?”

Read the rest. But I can answer the question outright. There has been a concerted effort on the part some to purposely hide the details of Plame Game, not because it would exonerate anyone, but rather what and who it would implicate.

Again, the fact that Iraq had been talking with Niger about obtaining uranium is a forgone conclusion at this point. The fact is that not was Niger dealing with Iraq, but had also had dealings with other rogue nations and that one agency in particular had personnel who were making sure the deals went smoothly. All was well until we looked like we were going into Iraq. When it was clear that war was imminent, they had to act and act they did, and what developed is what we have witnessed for three years of the Plame Game.

More to come, for now read Clarice’s article and follow the links.

*Note - Clarice will be on the MacRanger Show on Blogtalk Radio at 12:30pm this Saturday to talk about all things Plame, don’t miss it!

UPDATE: Also blogging AJ Strata.

UPDATE II: Here is a key point from Byron York’s article:

“What does the new information mean? On February 12, 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency released ‚Äî inside the government, not publicly ‚Äî a report covering the Africa uranium issue; its title said that Niger had ‚Äúsigned an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad.‚Äù CIA officials told Senate investigators the report spurred requests for information from both the State Department and the Department of Defense. Knowledgeable sources speculate ‚Äî and they stress, they are speculating ‚Äî that those inquiries from State and Defense were made on the 12th, the day the Defense Intelligence Agency report was sent around, and that Valerie Plame Wilson, in suggesting her husband be sent to investigate, was reacting to those requests, and not to the vice president‚Äôs question, which came the next day. In this new version of events, Dick Cheney was the last guy to request more information, not the first; the notion that his request started the whole affair seems wrong.

The other new document entered into evidence in the trial is another CIA memo, this one headlined “Memorandum for the Vice President” and dated February 14, 2002. That memo appears to begin — it’s not possible to say for sure because it is blacked out — with a discussion of the uranium issue, followed by this statement:

We have tasked our clandestine source[s] with ties to the Nigerien Government and consortium officials to seek additional information on the contract. We also are working with the Embassy and the defense attach?©‚Äôs office in Niamey [Niger] to verify their reports.

It is not clear from the poorly-defined copies released as evidence whether the memo refers to a “clandestine source” or “clandestine sources.” But from everything that we know about the case, Joseph Wilson was the person who was given the assignment to check out the Niger uranium story. Embassy officials were also told about it, as the memo indicates, but Wilson was the CIA’s man with ties to the Nigerien government.

If the timing spelled out in the new document is accurate ‚Äî if Wilson had already been picked for the task by February 14 ‚Äî the new evidence sheds a different light on the version of events given by Wilson himself in his book The Politics of Truth. In that, Wilson wrote about a meeting with CIA officials ‚Äî a meeting that took place on February 19, 2002 ‚Äî at which ‚ÄúI was asked if I would be willing to travel to Niger to check out the report in question.‚Äù Perhaps Wilson was indeed asked to go to Niger at that meeting, but the newly-released CIA document suggests the agency settled on Wilson several days earlier.”

What we see here is the CIA - specifically Plame’s unit and more specifically Plame taking substantial interest in getting ahead of the curve and this is key understanding exactly what I’m talking about.

Stay tuned, the Libby trial may be of value after all.