Joseph C. Wilson

This page is for the diplomat. For others of that name see Joseph Wilson.

For more detail about the political scandal, see Plame affair.

File:Joseph Wilson.jpg

Wilson, on occasion of delivering President's Lecture, at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 17, 2005

Joseph Charles Wilson IV (born November 61949) is a retired diplomat of the United States Foreign Service, who was posted to African nations and Iraq during the George H. W. Bush administration. During the George W. Bush administration, after his retirement from foreign service, Wilson became known to the general public as a result of his controversial op-ed published in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, four months after the 2003 invasion of Iraq began. In the op-ed, entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," Wilson documents his February 2002 trip investigating whether Iraq purchased or attempted to purchase yellowcake from Niger in the late 1990s and accuses the George W. Bush administration of "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" in order to justify war."

Shortly thereafter, columnist Robert Novak, while writing on the choice of Wilson for the Niger mission, disclosed that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA. In his column of July 14, 2003, Novak states: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. 'I will not answer any question about my wife,' Wilson told me." Novak's disclosure led to a federal investigation by the United States Department of Justice, resulting in the appointment of a Special Counsel, the CIA leak grand jury investigation, U.S. Congressional investigations in which both Wilsons have testified, further controversies pertaining to their testimony, highly-charged political debate about the contexts of Wilson's trip to Niger relating to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War, a federal trial (United States v. Libby), and the Wilsons' civil lawsuit against former and current officials of the Bush administration (Plame v. Cheney).

After Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case, Deputy Attorney General James Comey named Patrick J. Fitzgerald as the Special Counsel in order to determine who was involved in disclosing the identity of a CIA operative to various reporters in the spring of 2003. On 28 October 2005, this investigation, which is still open, resulted in criminal indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, charging him with five counts of alleged felonious misconduct impeding the investigation, including obstruction of justice (one count), making false statements to federal investigators (two counts), and perjury in testimony before a federal grand jury (two counts). On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted on four of five counts in United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby". After Libby's conviction, his sentencing, and President Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence, and related developments in the Wilsons' civil suit (dismissed and being appealed), Joseph Wilson has issued public statements, subsequently posted on the website of the Joseph and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust.

Personal history and family background

Wilson was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1949, to Joseph Charles Wilson III and Phyllis (Finnell) Wilson, and grew up in California and Europe (Wilson, Politics of Truth 32-33).

He was raised in a "proud Republican family" in which "there is a long tradition of politics and service to country" and for which "Politics was a staple around the table." His mother's uncle James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph was mayor of San Francisco from 1912 to 1931, "the city's longest-serving mayor," and served as governor of California "until his death in office in 1934." For his mother's brothers, as they told their new brother-in-law (who was to become Wilson's father), Barry Goldwater was "a bit liberal." Military service was also a strong part of his family history: both his grandfathers had served in the two world wars, his paternal grandfather (the "Colonel") receiving both the British Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre "for his exploits in World War I," and his son, Wilson's father Joe, "was a Marine pilot in World War II and was among the last pilots to take off from the deck of the aircraft Franklin just before it was hit by two bombs dropped from a Japanese dive-bomber, one of which exploded amid planes waiting to take off," resulting in "the deaths of more than seven hundred American servicemen. . . . He never forgot how lucky he was to have survived––not to mention that my younger brother and I would never have been born."

Education

In 1968, Wilson matriculated at the University of California, Santa Barbara, majoring, he onced joked, in "history, volleyball, and surfing," maintaining a "C" average, and working as a carpenter for five years after his graduation in 1971. He became more serious about his education, "won a graduate fellowship and studied public administration."

The Vietnam protests of the late 1960s galvanized him along with much of his generation and "pitted parents against kids in [his] family just as it did in many households around the country."

Subsequent personal life and family

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The Wilsons
Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press, MSNBC, Time

Former Ambassador Wilson currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his third wife, the former Valerie Elise Plame, and their two children, twins Trevor Rolph and Samantha Finnell Diana, born in 2000.

He is also the father of another set of twins, also a boy and a girl, Sabrina Cecile and Joseph Charles, who were born in 1979, during his first marriage to his "college sweetheart," Susan Otchis, which ended amicably in the mid-80s, toward the end of his service in Burundi; they were divorced in 1986. For the next twelve years, Wilson was married to his second wife, Jacqueline, "a Frenchwoman who had been raised in Africa" (Wilson, Politics of Truth 68-69).

Wilson met Plame in 1997, while working for President Bill Clinton; they married in 1998, after his divorce from Jacqueline, which had been "delayed because I was never in one place long enough to complete the process," though he and she had already been living separate lives since the mid-90s (Wilson, Politics of Truth 242).

Among his hobbies are golf, bicycling, and fitness.

Diplomatic career

Having become fluent in French as a teenager, Wilson entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976, as "a general services officer -- responsible for keeping the power on and the cars running, among other duties -- in Niamey, Niger."

Wilson served in the U.S. diplomatic corps from January 1976 through 1998, with postings in five different African nations between 1976 and 1988.

From 1988 to 1991, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. In the wake of Iraq's 1990 Invasion of Kuwait, he became the last American diplomat to meet with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, telling him in very clear terms to "get out of Kuwait". When Hussein sent a note to Wilson (along with other embassy heads in Baghdad) threatening to execute anyone sheltering foreigners in Iraq, Wilson publicly repudiated the dictator by appearing at a press conference wearing a homemade noose around his neck, and declaring, "If the choice is to allow American citizens to be taken hostage or to be executed, I will bring my own fucking rope."

Despite Hussein's threats, Wilson sheltered more than one hundred Americans at the embassy, and successfully evacuated several thousand people (Americans and other nationals) from the country. He was praised by President George H. W. Bush for his actions: "...when I arrived back in Washington on January 13, 1991, the very next day I was in the Oval Office ... The President introduced me to his War Cabinet as a true American hero."

Wilson next served for three years as U.S. ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, and subsequently helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council during the administration of President Bill Clinton.

Diplomatic postings:

• 1976–1978: General Services Officer, Niamey, Niger
• 1978–1979: Administrative Office, Lomé, Togo
• 1979–1981: Administrative Officer, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.
• 1981–1982: Administrative Officer, Pretoria, South Africa
• 1982–1985: Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), Bujumbura, Burundi
• 1985–1986: Congressional Fellow, offices of Senator Al Gore and Representative Tom Foley
• 1986–1988: DCM, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo
• 1988–1991: DCM, Baghdad, Iraq
• 1992–1995: Ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe
• 1995–1997: Political Adviser to Commander in Chief U.S. Armed Forces, Europe EUCOM, Stuttgart, Germany
• 1997–1998: Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council, Washington, D.C.

Professional activities after retirement from foreign service

Wilson manages JC Wilson International Ventures Corporation, a consulting firm specializing in strategic management and international business development.

Honors

Public service awards

• Secretary of State Distinguished Service Award
• Department of State Superior Honor Award
• Department of State Meritorious Honor Award
• University of California, Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumnus Award
• American Foreign Service Association William R. Rivkin Award (1987)

Decorations

• Commander in the Order of the Equatorial Star (Government of Gabon)
• Admiral in the El Paso Navy (El Paso County Commissioners)

Other awards

• BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award, shared with wife, Valerie Plame (2005).
• Ron Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling (from the Fertel Foundation and The Nation Institute, Oct. 2003)

Political history and views

At the midpoint of his career as a diplomat, Wilson served for a year (1985–1986) as a Congressional Fellow in the offices of Senator Al Gore and Representative Tom Foley; his working for Democrats was simply a matter of "happenstance." Of the 2000 election he writes:

In retrospect, I was naïve in thinking that a mature democracy like ours would naturally embrace the rule of law and engage in polite discourse instead of the law of tooth and claw I had seen operate abroad. In this case, the shameless lust for power, and the genuine hatred among the right wing for Bill Clinton, just overwhelmed the Democrats. I was appalled by the gutter tactics of the out-of-state rabble that bullied public servants and intimidated them into stopping the recount of ballots in Miami-Dade County. I had railed against such conduct in flawed elections in Africa, and disliked it just as much in my own country.

Although I had voted for the candidate who ultimately lost the election, I assumed hopefully, and naïvely again, that once in office George W. Bush and his experienced team would curb the excesses of the extremists, and that the country would be in good hands. Valerie and I even attended a swank inauguration reception on Pennsylvania Avenue where we looked down on the president's parade route and celebrated with Bush supporters the peaceful transition of power that is the hallmark of our democracy.

In May 2002, "several months after [his] trip to Niger," Wilson writes, he "participated in the annual conference of the American Turkish Council," one of whose "keynote speakers was Richard Perle, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and one of the most virulent of the neoconservative war advocates. . . . In his speech at the conference, Perle spoke openly of a coming war with Iraq. His words, laden with the fire and brimstone of the true zealot, troubled me deeply. In a symposium that I cochaired the same afternoon with the former Turkish military commander, Cevik Bir, I voiced concerns. It was the first time in more than a decade that I'd spoken publicly about Iraq."

In 2003 Wilson began to support and formally endorsed John Kerry for president, donated $2,000 to his campaign, and served as an advisor to and speechwriter for the campaign in 2003 and 2004. He has made contributions to the campaigns of Democratic candidates, such as Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Congressman Charles B. Rangel of New York, and to Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson supported activist groups like Win Without War, a nonpartisan coalition of groups united in opposition to the Iraq War, has been quoted in the organization's press releases, and has been attacked by conservatives for such anti-war activism. Nevertheless, according to an article to which Scott Shane and Lynette Clemetson contributed, published in the New York Times: "Despite conservatives' efforts to portray him as a left-wing extremist, [Wilson] insisted he remained a centrist at heart. But after his tangle with the current administration, he admits 'it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher.'"

Wilson endorses Veterans for a Secure America (VSA).

On July 16, 2007, Wilson endorsed Democratic Senator from New York Hillary Clinton for President of the United States in 2008.

Wilson's trip to Niger

In late February of 2002, Wilson was sent to Niger on behalf of the CIA to investigate the possibility that Saddam Hussein had a deal to buy enriched uranium yellowcake. Wilson met with the current U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick (1999–) at the embassy and was informed that she had already debunked that story; however, they agreed that Wilson would interview dozens of officials who had been in the Niger government when the deal had supposedly taken place. He ultimately concluded: "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."

According to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (2004), on the basis of his trip to Niger,

In an interview with Committee staff, the former ambassador [Wilson] was able to provide more information about the meeting between former [Nigerien] Prime Minister Mayaki and the Iraqi delegation. ... [Wilson] said that Mayaki did meet with the Iraqi delegation but never discussed what was meant by [the two countries] "expanding commercial relations" [being suggested by the Iraqis]. ... [Wilson] said that because Mayaki was wary of discussing any trade issues with a country under United Nations (UN) sanctions, he made a successful effort to steer the conversation away from a discussion of trade with the Iraqi delegation.

The controversy surrounding Wilson began with President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, containing his now-infamous "16 words" in which he stated that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

On March 7, 2003, just weeks before the start of the Iraq War, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its report, which determined that documents suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger are "obvious" forgeries. The Butler Report states that those forged documents were distributed with the knowing goal of being discovered as obvious forgeries so as to discredit the intelligence.

See also: Butler Review § Conclusions of the Review

"What I Didn't Find in Africa," by Joseph C. Wilson IV

In the July 62003 issue of The New York Times, Wilson contributed an "Op-Ed" entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which he accuses the Bush administration of "exaggerating the Iraqi threat" in order to justify war. In this account, often referred to later as his "New York Times 'Op-Ed,'" Wilson states the rationale for his trip as follows: "The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer" (italics added).

Critics contend that in "What I Didn't Find in Africa" Wilson falsely claims to have been sent by the vice president personally; however, Wilson's text does not support that criticism. Supporters counter that in his rationale for his trip in "What I Didn't Find in Africa," as on other occasions in print and in media interviews, Wilson states only that he was sent by the CIA in response to questions asked by the "office" of the vice president, not personally by Vice President Cheney himself. In his Meet the Press interview with Andrea Mitchell on July 6, 2003, former Ambassador Wilson states: "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there."

George Tenet, the director of the CIA during Wilson's trip, has said that the administration was not directly briefed on Wilson's report "because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution (within the intelligence community), but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials." In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, Tenet writes, "This unremarkable report was disseminated, but because it produced no solid answers, there wasn't any urgency to brief its results to senior officials such as the vice president ... As far as we could tell, the Wilson summary was never delivered to Cheney. In fact, I have no recollection myself of hearing about Wilson's trip at the time."

On Monday, July 7, 2003, the day after the publication of "What I Didn't Find in Africa," the Bush administration admitted "that accusations included in the president's State of the Union address have turned out to be inaccurate." In a press conference held in Africa, where he was then traveling with President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, "fielded questions about the faulty intelligence" and concluded: "There was sufficient evidence floating around at that time that such a statement was not totally outrageous or not to be believed or not to be appropriately used. It's that once we used the statement, and after further analysis, and looking at other estimates we had, and other information that was coming in, it turned out that the basis upon which that statement was made didn't hold up, and we said so, and we've acknowledged it, and we've moved on."

Nevertheless, as Colin Powell suggested at the time –– referring to "the case I put down on the 5th of February [2003], for an hour and 20 minutes, roughly, on terrorism, on weapons of mass destruction, and on the human rights case, a short section at the end, we stand behind" –– the Bush administration still maintains that other intelligence that Iraq may have attempted to acquire uranium in Africa may have been correct. Many supporters of the theory point to the Butler Review, which found, without giving evidence of such a claim, that there was credible intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger in 1999, but not in 2002, and that there was even less certain intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Critics of the theory view the evidence relating to the Democratic Republic of Congo as suspect and point out that, while President Bush mentioned "Africa" in his State of the Union Address, in fielding questions in a "press gaggle" about the President's statement, also on 7 July 2003, press secretary Ari Fleischer affirmed explicitly that President Bush's claim that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from "Africa" derived specificially from information pertaining only to Niger and that the "the President did not have that information [about other African nations from the NIE] prior to his giving the State of the Union."

In addition, nuclear expert Norman Dombey has pointed out that the information relied upon by the Butler Review on the Niger issue was incomplete; on 25 July 2004, he notes: "The Butler report says the claim was credible because an Iraqi diplomat visited Niger in 1999, and almost three-quarters of Niger's exports were uranium. But this is irrelevant, since France controls Niger's uranium mines." Moreover, when asked by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss the conclusions of British intelligence, Deputy Director of Intelligence John McLaughlin stated, "The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point."

Mr. Wilson's verbal report to the CIA seemed to confirm Iraq's desire to open negotiations with Niger, possibly involving uranium. The July 11, 2003 CIA Statement by Director George Tenet states: "The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss 'expanding commercial relations' between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales."

When asked to respond his statement on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on October 5, 2003, former Ambassador Wilson replied:

An intermediary came to this official, and said, "I want you to meet with these guys. They’re interested in talking about expanding commercial relations." The person who talked to me said, "Red flags went up immediately, I thought of U.N. Security Council sanctions, I thought of all sorts of other reasons why we didn’t want to have any meeting. I declined the meeting," and this was out of the country, on the margins of an OIC meeting. So it was a meeting that did not take place. And at one point during the conversation, this official kind of looked up in the sky and plumbing his conscience, looked back and said, "You know, maybe they might have wanted to talk about uranium."

Although Russert cited then CIA officials and CIA Director George Tenet, who disavowed approving Wilson's trip and disputed his findings, Wilson addressed those points in the program, and Tenet's own accounts of the intelligence prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the rationale for the Iraq War in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA have been disputed by his critics.

See also: Butler Review, September Dossier, and Plame affair timeline

The Politics of Truth, by Ambassador Joseph Wilson

In 2004 Wilson published a political and personal memoir entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004; paperback ed., 2005).

The 2005 paperback edition features a different subtitle: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity.

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Reports relating to Wilson's Niger trip

The 2004 Report

Section II ("Niger") of the often-redacted U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq presents a summary of the Committee's findings about the "Original Niger Reporting [A]" and about the decision of the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA "to contact a former ambassador [Wilson] who had a posting early in his career in Niger" ("Former Ambassador" [B]).

Section B on Wilson begins by observing that "Officials from the CIA's DO [Directorate of Operations] Counterproliferation Division (CPD) told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President's Office and the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information" (39).

Although "Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador," the Report states that "interviews and documents provided to the Committee," which include a memorandum of July 7, 2003, composed by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which the Committee Report cites in detail later, "indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip." According to the Committee, "The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name' and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] [sic] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity'" (39).

The Report continues by noting that Mrs. Wilson sent her February 12, 2002 e-mail memo "just one day before CPD sent a cable ... [blacked out] requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports" (39).

"The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff," the Report continues, "that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA," as she says that she would consider doing in her memo of February 12, 2002, "and told him 'there's this crazy report' on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq" (39).

"Notes – Niger/Iraq uranium Meeting CIA, 2/19/02"

The Report states:

The INR analyst's meeting notes and electronic mail (e-mail) from other participants indicate that INR explained its skepticism that the alleged uranium contract could possibly be carried out due to the fact that it would be very difficult to hide such a large shipment of yellowcake and because 'the French appear to have control of the uranium mining, milling and transport process, and would seem to have little interest in selling uranium to the Iraqis.' The notes also indicate that INR believed that the embassy in Niger had good contacts and would be able to get to the truth on the uranium issue, suggesting a visit from the former ambassador would be redundant. Other meeting participants argued that the trip would do little to clarify the story on the alleged uranium deal because the Nigeriens would be unlikely to admit to a uranium sales agreement with Iraq, even if one had been negotiated. An e-mail from a WINPAC analyst to CPD following the meeting noted 'it appears that the results from this source will be suspect at best, and not believable under most scenarios.'" (41)

Nevertheless, the Committee Report adds, "CPD concluded that with no other options, sending the former ambassador [Wilson] to Niger was worth a try." (41)

It continues: "On February 20, 2002, CPD provided the former ambassador [Wilson] with talking points for his use with contacts in Niger." (41)

According to the report, the "talking points were general" and focused on:

• "asking officials if Niger had been approached, conducted discussions, or entered into any agreements concerning uranium transfers with any 'countries of concern' ... [blacked out] ..." and, specifically:
• "whether any uranium might be missing from Niger or might have been transferred" and
• "how Niger accounts for all of its uranium each year." (41)

But "the talking points":

• "did not refer to the specific reporting on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal"
• "did not mention names or dates from the reporting, and"
• "did not mention that there was any such deal being reported in intelligence channels." (41)

Moreover, the Committee Report states explicitly that "DO officials told Committee staff that they promised the former ambassador [Wilson] that they would keep his relationship with CIA confidential, but did not ask for the former ambassador to do the same and did not ask him to sign a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement." (41)

Wilson "left for Niger on February 21, 2002," arriving in Niger on February 26, 2002, according to the Report (41-42).

Wilson "told Committee staff that he first met with [U.S.] Ambassador [to Niger] Owens-Kirkpatrick to discuss his [then] upcoming meetings. Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick asked him not to meet with current Nigerien officials because she believed it might complicate her continuing diplomatic efforst with them on the uranium issue. The former ambassador agreed to restrict his meetings to former officials and the private sector." (42)

In his interview with the Committee, former Ambassador Wilson "told Committee staff that he met with the former Nigerien Prime Minister, the former Minister of Mines and Energy, and other business contacts. At the end of this visit, he debriefed Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick ... [blacked out], Chad. He told Committee staff that he had told both U.S. officials he thought there was 'nothing to the story.' Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick told Committee staff she recalled the former ambassador saying 'he had reached the same conclusions the embassy reached [detailed on 41-42], that it was highly unlikely that anything was going on.'" (42)

"On March 1, 2002," the Committee states in its report, "INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." (42)

According to the Committee:

The INR analyst who drafted the assessment told Committee staff that he had been told that the piece was in response to interest from the Vice President's office in the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. The assessment reiterated INR's view that France controlled the uranium industry and 'would tak action to block a sale of the kind alleged in a CIA report of questionable credibility from a foreign government service.' The assessment added that 'some officials may have conspired for individual gain to arrange a uranium sale,' but considered President Tandja's government highly unlikely to risk relations with the U.S. and other key aid donors. In a written reponse to a question from Committee staff on this matter, the Department of State said the assessment was distributed through the routine distribution process in which intelligence documents are delivered to the White House situation room, but State did not provide the assessment directly to the Vice President in a special delivery." (42)

The Committee Report adds, however, that "In early March 2002, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger Uranium issue," and that, "In response, on March 5, 2002, WINPAC analysts sent an analytic update to the briefer which noted that the government of Niger said it was making all efforts to ensure that its uranium would be used for only peaceful pruposes. The update said the foreign government service that provided the original report 'was unable to provide new information but continues to assess that its source is reliable.' The update also noted that the CIA would 'be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5.'" (43)

According to the Report, "Later that day" [March 5, 2002], "two CIA DO officers debriefed the former ambassador [Wilson] who had returned from Niger the previous day [March 4, 2002]. The debriefing took place in the former ambassador's home and although his wife was there, according to the reports officer, she acted as a hostess and did not participate in the debrief." (43)

Then, "Based on information provided verbally by the former ambassador [Wilson], the DO case officer wrote a draft intelligence report and sent it to the DO reports officer who added additional relevant information from his notes. (43) [See illustration above.]

The Committee Reports states:

The intelligence report based on the former ambassador's [Wilson's] trip was disseminated on March 8, 2002. The report did not identify the former ambassador by name or as a former ambassador, but described him as "a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record.' The report also indicated that the 'subsources of the following informatin knew their remarks could reach the U.S. government and may have intended to influence as well as inform.' DO officials told Committee staff that this type of description was routine and was done in order to protect the former ambassador [Wilson] as the source of the information, which they had told him they would do. DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the 'high priority of the issue.' The report was widely distributed in routine channels.

The rest of the intelligence report summarized by the Committee Report (44) indicates that "Niger's former Minister for Energy and Mines," Mai Manga, had

stated that [in Niger] there were no sales outside of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) channels since the mid-1980s. He knew of no contracts signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of uranium. He said that an Iranian delegation was interested in purchasing 400 tons of yellowcake from Niger in 1998, but said that no contract was ever signed with Iran. Mai Manga also described how the French mining consortium controls Nigerien uranium mining and keeps the uranium very tightly controlled from the time it is mined until the time it is loaded onto ships in Benin for transport overseas. Mai Manga believed it would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange for a special shipment of uranium to a pariah state given these controls.(44)

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report finds that Wilson's "description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respects":

1. "First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to [rogue] nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium [in the past]."
2. "Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate transaction. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki."
3. "Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the ... [blacked out] intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any informatin about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no 'documents' circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from ... [blacked out] intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Meeting notes and other correspondence show that details of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report ... [blacked out] ...." (44-45)

The Committee Report delves into the nature of those discrepancies, citing Wilson's self-described "confusion":

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, 'among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have 'misspoken' to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were 'forged.' He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents. (45)

Main article: Butler Report

Main article: Niger uranium forgeries

In addition, Wilson "told Committee staff that he had no direct knowledge of how the information he provided was handled by the CIA, but, based on his previous government experience, he believed that the report would have been distributed to the White House and that the Vice President received a direct response to his question about the possible uranium deal." At that time, as quoted in the Report, Wilson said:

Whether or not there was a specific response to the specific question the Vice President asked I don't know for a fact, other than to know, having checked with my own memory when I was in the White House at the National Security Council ... [sic] any time an official who is senior enough to ask that question, that official was senior enough to have a very specific response. The question then becomes whether the response came back as a telephone call, a non-paper – in other words, talking points – or orally briefed, or a specific cable in addition to the more general report that is circulated. (45)

Significantly, the Committee Report notes:

The CIA's DO gave the former ambassador's information a grade of 'good,' which means that it added to the IC's body of understanding on the issue, ... [blacked out]. The possible grades are unsatisfactory, good, excellent, and outstanding, which, according to the Deputy Chief of CPD, are very subjective. ... [blacked out] ... The reports officer said that a 'good' grade was merited because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the Intelligence Community [IC], but did not provide substantial new information. He said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting. (46)

Yet, the Senate Committee Report goes on to summarize the responses to the IC, DIA, and CIA analysts to "the intelligence report based on the former ambassador's trip":

• "IC analysts had a fairly consistent response to [it] ... in that no one believed it added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story ..."
• An INR analyst said when he saw the [Wilson's] report he believed that it corroborated the INR's position, but said that the 'report could be read in different ways.' He said the [Wilson's] report was credible, but [he] did not give it a lot of attention because he was busy with other things."
• "DIA and CIA analysts said that when they saw the intelligence report they did not believe that it supplied much new information and did not think that it clarified the story on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. They did not find Nigerien denials that they had discussed uranium sales with Iraq as very surprising because they had no expectation that Niger would admit to such an agreement if it did exist. The analysts did, however, find it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales." (46)

The Report also states that "Because CIA analysts did not believe that the report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers" and that, "For the same reason, CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue" (46), which runs counter to what Wilson stated were his own expectations based on his own previous National Security Agency experience. It also states that it established that "There were no obvious inconsistencies in the names of officials mentioned or the dates of the transactions in any of the three reports," although, it states, "Of the five lower ranking, two were not the individuals in the positions described in the reports, however these do not appear to be names or positions with which intelligence analysts would have been familiar" and "The only mistake in any of the reports regarding dates, [sic] is that one date, July 7, 2000, is said to be a Wednesday in the report, but was actually a Friday." (47)

A later summary section on "Niger" (C) concludes:

The Committee has examined the Niger uranium issue in depth and reported the information and findings on the issue in a separate section of this report [II]. The Committee notes, however, that there were a number of intelligence reports which indicated Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from several countries in Africa, including Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. At the time the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] was written the forged foreign language documents were not available to the IC, but there was intelligence reporting that indicated Iraq may have approached Niger either to procure uranium or for another unidentified purpose. The Committee did not find the information that showed Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" as indicated in the NIE" [and as President Bush would later state in his 2003 State of the Union], but it did indicate that Iraq may have been trying to acquire uranium. See the Niger section of this report for a detailed explanation of the treatment of the Niger uranium information by the IC [Intelligence Community] prior to, during, and after the NIE process" (125).

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence lists first among its "Conclusions" in its Iraq Report (issued on July 7 and updated on July 9, 2004): "Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting."

Overall, however, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Report observes, in Conclusion 6:

Problems with the Intelligence Community's HUMINT [Human Intelligence] efforts were also evident in the Intelligence Community's handling of Iraq's alleged efforts to acquire uranium from Niger. The Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee traveling to Niger. The Committee believes, however, that it is unfortunate, considering the significant resources available to the CIA, that this was the only option available.

The "Niger Conclusions" relating to Wilson's op-ed essay about President Bush's "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address are Conclusions 12-26.

Selected press commentary and Wilson's responses

Susan Schmidt opens her article on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report in the Washington Post by stating that it challenges some of the statements made by Wilson and suggests that Wilson's wife was more involved in his selection for the mission than Wilson has repeatedly asserted: "Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly." This introduction does not, however, take into account wide differences of interpretation relating to Wilson's comments on the matter both in print and in media interviews that she reports throughout the body of her article.

Schmidt observes:

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, according to the report, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson.

But high-ranking CIA officials told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that they disputed the claim that Plame was involved in the final decision to send Wilson and indicated that the operations official who made it was not present at the [February 19, 2002] meeting where Wilson was chosen. As reported by Knut Royce and Tim Phelps in Newsday on 22 July 2003:

A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can’t figure out what it could be." "We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

Wilson states in "Sixteen Words", the first chapter of The Politics of Truth:

Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger's uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter. Though she worked on weapons of mass destruction issues, she was not at the meeting I attended where the subject of Niger's uranium was discussed, when the possibility of my actually traveling to the country was broached. She definitely had not proposed that I make this trip. (5)

Schmidt renders the quotation from Wilson in a misleading way, however, omitting any sign of her editorial ellipsis:

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year [The Politics of Truth (2004)]. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday [July 9, 2003], saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo [of Feb. 12, 2002 sent to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the (Nigerian) PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity"], he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

Wilson's responses to this article, published in The Politics of Truth, point out significant errors of fact and interpretation in Susan Schmidt's account of the Committee's report:

Her article was replete with factual errors that could have been avoided had she bothered to read the text of the report or even done some basic research, such as looking up the CIA statement made the previous year in the Newsday article about Valerie's lack of involvement in the trip. But she did not. Indeed, her reporting was so sloppy that from the lead sentence she conflated what the three Republican senators––and not even a majority of their own party's representation on the committee––asserted with what the actual report concluded. She even confused Iraq with Iran, a significant error of fact. She also quoted a phrase from this book that Valerie "had nothing to do with the matter" without the qualifying phrase in the beginning of the sentence: "other than serve as a conduit." Schmidt asserted that my report, rather than debunking intelligence about the purported uranium sales to Iraq, had bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. She went further, noting that "contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address."

Both of these assertions were patently false, and even a cursory reading of the body of the report dedicated to the Niger case would have borne that out. (lix)

Wilson also responded directly to Senators Roberts, Bond, and Hatch in a letter to the Senate, sharply disputing their claims and refuting those attempting to "discredit" him.

Accounts of Valerie Plame's involvement in her husband's selection appear to differ markedly, but the main difference may be semantic. Wilson claims that his wife simply contacted him on the agency's behalf at its behest, responded to her supervisor's request for information, and escorted her husband to the meeting before leaving it, prior to any decision being made; whereas some press accounts whose reliability does appear at times indeed questionable claim that Plame may also have "recommended" her husband by virtue of her writing a summary of his qualifications when he was already being considered. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD (Counterproliferation Division) employee, suggested his name for the trip" (parenthetical interpolation added). Nevertheless, as Schmidt also clearly states, "Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger," and the 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee Report in no way contradicts or even counters that assertion.

In a "statement [submitted] to the Congress" in July 2005, former CIA officer Larry C. Johnson further refutes the "allegation" cited most often in the media:

Another false claim is that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report issued in July 2004, it is clear that the Vice President himself requested that the CIA provide its views on a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The Vice President's request was relayed through the CIA bureaucracy to the Director of the Counter Proliferation Division at the CIA. Valerie worked for a branch in that Division. The Senate Intelligence Report is frequently cited by Republican partisans as "proof" that Valerie sent her husband to Niger because she sent a memo describing her husband's qualifications to the Deputy Division Chief. Several news personalities, such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, continue to repeat this nonsense as proof. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does not include in the report is the fact that Valerie's boss had asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for the job. She did what any good employee does; she gave her boss what he asked for.

Schmidt also states in her July 10, 2004 article in The Washington Post: that the Senate Intelligence Committee Report points to inconsistencies in Wilson's retrospective accounts of his trip to Niger (which Wilson disputes):

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Nevertheless, Schmidt concludes:

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."

"Phase two" of the investigation: The 2007 Report

Main article: Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq § "Phase two" of the investigation

Two volumes of the phase II report, released on September 8, 2006, entitled Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments and The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress, conclude that there was no prewar evidence that Saddam was building weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and there was no evidence that Saddam had links to al-Qaeda, two principal rationales given by the Bush administration for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

After Democrats gained a majority in the Senate during the November 2006 midterm election, chairmanship of the committee passed to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). The former chair, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) left the committee; the ranking Republican and vice chairman of the committee is now Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-MO).

On May 25, 2007, the reconstituted U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a 226-page volume entitled Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments About Postwar Iraq. It includes seven pages of conclusions regarding assessments provided by the intelligence community to U.S. government leaders prior to the Iraq war. The report concludes that the intelligence community had assessed that establishing a stable government in Iraq would be a "long, difficult, and probably turbulent challenge," that Iraqi society was deeply divided and would engage in violent conflict unless an occupying power took steps to prevent it, and that the war would increase the threat of terrorism, at least temporarily. The intelligence community also assessed that a U.S. defeat and occupation of Iraq would lead to a surge in political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups, and that the war would not cause other countries in the region to abandon their WMD programs.

This updated volume also includes an Appendix containing two previously-classified reports by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) entitled "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq" and "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq", as well as "Additional and Minority Views", in which different members of the committee comment on the history of the committee's work in this area and criticize what they characterize as the politicization of that work by members of the other party.

The section entitled "Minority Views" reconsiders the historical background and contexts of former Ambassador Wilson's trip to Niger, observing what Republican committee members regard as "contradictions" in various cited accounts by Mrs. Wilson of why and how her husband was ultimately selected by the CIA for his trip to Niger and other highly-controversial aspects of his Niger mission relating to the President's "16 words" in his January 2003 State of the Union message. The Republicans' comparisons of Mrs. Wilson's various accounts are posted on their United States House of Representatives Oversight Committee website.

Former Ambassador Wilson responded to such criticism from the Republicans pertaining to the 2004 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report publicly in media appearances and in print and to the more recent criticism from the Republicans in his recent testimony during the Congressional hearing on "The Use and Misuse of Clemency Powers by Officials of the Executive Branch" (11 July 2007):

At one point the hearing degenerated into name-calling, as Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., accused Plame of lying to the Judiciary Committee during testimony in March when she said she had not tapped her husband to travel to Niger for the fact-finding mission that led to his op-ed questioning Bush's Iraq war claims.

"This is yet a further smear of my wife's good name and my good name," Wilson loudly protested later, as Issa objected repeatedly and Conyers fought to gain control of the hearing."

Further information: Joseph C. Wilson § Reaction to Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence

Initial controversy: Wilson's dispute with the White House in January 2003

Some pertinent contexts

President George W. Bush gave a major speech on 7 October 2002, claiming: "The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons." According to a report published in the Washington Post, earlier drafts of that speech included the specific claim that uranium was sought from Niger, but the CIA successfully requested that President Bush's speechwriters remove it.

President Bush included the "16 words" in his January 2003 State of the Union address, claiming that Iraq had sought uranium from a country in Africa, even after the CIA had expressed reservations in October 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 states that "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious."

In 2002, CIA analysts had testified before Congress that, prior to the Iraq invasion, they believed that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge for nuclear enrichment, as claimed by the Bush administration and its supporters and as reported initially in the mainstream media.

On 11 December 2005, the Los Angeles Times reported that French intelligence had warned the Bush Administration repeatedly that there was no evidence that Saddam sought uranium from Niger: "The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigate at the CIA's request. . . . [T]he essence of Chouet's account — that the French repeatedly investigated the Niger claim, found no evidence to support it, and warned the CIA — was extensively corroborated by [a] former CIA official and a current French government official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity."

David Corn reveals in The Nation that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA to help determine the use of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq; citing his own book, co-written with Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, which had just been published, Corn states:

Her specific position at the CIA is revealed for the first time in a new book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by the author of this article and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The book chronicles the inside battles within the CIA, the White House, the State Department and Congress during the run-up to the war. Its account of Wilson's CIA career is mainly based on interviews with confidential CIA sources. (Italics added.)

See also: Joseph C. Wilson § Support_for_Wilson

Selected additional press commentary

An editorial published in the Wall Street Journal asserts that Wilson had lied about what he reports in "What I Didn't Find in Africa": "In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission," concluding: "The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know."

A year later, another editorial headlined "A Good Leak" in the Washington Post claims that "Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth and that, in fact, his report [to the CIA] supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium." "A Good Leak" also claims that "President Bush was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons."

But the New York Times directly counters claims made in the Washington Post editorial in its own editorial headlined "A Bad Leak":

President Bush says he declassified portions of the prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq because he "wanted people to see the truth" about Iraq's weapons programs and to understand why he kept accusing Saddam Hussein of stockpiling weapons that turned out not to exist. This would be a noble sentiment if it actually bore any relationship to Mr. Bush's actions in this case, or his overall record.

Mr. Bush did not declassify the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — in any accepted sense of that word — when he authorized I. Lewis Libby Jr., through Vice President Dick Cheney, to talk about it with reporters. He permitted a leak of cherry-picked portions of the report. The declassification came later.

And this president has never shown the slightest interest in disclosure, except when it suits his political purposes. He has run one of the most secretive administrations in American history, consistently withholding information and vital documents not just from the public, but also from Congress.

Another editorial in the Wall Street Journal gives excerpts from the British and American "investigations" pertaining to Wilson's trip to Niger, finding justification for his perspective presented in "What I Didn't Find in Africa," along with some qualifications and distinctions between some evidence of Iraq's attempts at acquiring uranium yellowcake from African nations such as Niger and its actual lack of following through on such attempts.

In their news report "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic", published in the same Washington Post issue as "A Good Leak", National Security Correspondent Dafna Linzer and Pulitzer-Prize winning National Correspondent Barton Gellman, conclude that the White House's disclosure of certain portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) seems to have misrepresented to reporters the actual level of confidence of the intelligence community in the proposition that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium. They state: "At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he [Libby] told [reporter] Miller that the uranium story was a 'key judgment' of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance. In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document." Moreover, Linzer and Gellman observe that, according to the NIE, "U.S. intelligence 'did not know' the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, 'cannot confirm' any success and had 'inconclusive' evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations. ... The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim 'highly dubious.' For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate" (italics added).

A few days later Dafna Linzer wrote another article in the Washington Post describing a letter from Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to Judge Reggie B. Walton correcting a sentence appearing in his recent filings describing Scooter Libby's testimony regarding his conversation with Judith Miller about the October 2002 NIE. Purportedly, that sentence states erroneously that Libby "was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Instead, the sentence should have conveyed that Libby was to tell Miller some of the key judgments of the NIE "and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Replying to complaints from various readers, the Washington Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell, notes that in their front-page news report Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer relied on Fitzgerald's representations in his legal filings, that the editorial's writer wrote it before the front-page report and that although the writer had not read the report, it would not have changed his mind. Howell notes that the basis for the editorial's claim that Wilson's report "supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium" was the fact that there was a meeting between Iraqi and Nigerien trade officials "because that's mostly what Niger has to export." She observes that the editorial inconsistently deals with the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which notes that "the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research analysts believed that [Wilson's] report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq." Howell concludes:

It would have been helpful if the editorial had put statements about Wilson in more context –– especially the controversy over his trip and what he said. It also could have used a sentence to say what is known in every newsroom: Leaks are good for journalism.

On the Gellman/Linzer story, it would have been good to quote more from the WMD commission's and Iraq Survey Group's reports and specifically their conclusions.

Both pieces demonstrate the high wall between editorial and news. While editorial writers read reporters' stories, Executive Editor Len Downie doesn't regularly read editorials (although he read this one) lest it make a mark on how he runs the news pages.

Some readers think it's a scandal when two parts of the newspaper appear to be in conflict with each other, but it's not that unusual that reporting –– particularly in news and editorial –– will depend on different sources. It happened again last week when an editorial and a story gave different estimates for how long it might take Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

Reporting about national security and intelligence gathering is always fraught with fraught [sic]; it is a subject I will write about again.

Related controversies involving Wilson

Claims made by retired generals Vallely and McInerney

On 3 November 2005, retired U.S. Army Major General Paul E. Vallely claimed that Wilson "mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 [one year before she was allegedly "outed"] in the Fox News Channel's 'green room' in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts," that Wilson "introduced Plame at cocktail parties and other social events around Washington as his CIA wife," and that Plame's status was "pretty common knowledge" because she had "been out there on the Washington scene many years." If Plame were a covert agent at the time, Vallely said, "he would not have paraded her around as he did."

Subsequently, in media appearances and via online posts by Art Moore in WorldNetDaily, General Vallely revised the number of times that he claimed to have met and spoken with Wilson specifically about his wife's "employment" for the CIA (yet still not her specific status as a NOC) to only "one occasion."

According to John Batchelor's own post on the blog RedState on November 6, 2005, Lt. General Tom McInerney (USAF Retired) said that Joe Wilson also "boasted" about his wife's job with the CIA to him while they were waiting in the green room at FOX News.

Again following Vallely's lead, after being threatened with legal action by Wilson's lawyer, in his own various later media appearances, McInerney has also backed away from initial impressions that he gave that he himself also had experiences in conversations with Wilson that supported his friend Vallely's claims.

Wilson's response to the claims

According to another "exclusive" posted on the blog WorldNetDaily, Wilson demanded through his lawyer that Vallely retract these allegations, calling them "patently false."

Wilson vigorously disputed the General's claims regarding any such conversation touching on his wife's "employment". According to Moore, Wilson has also labeled these further claims "slanderous," while serving notice of possible legal repercussions on Vallely, McInerney, and WorldNetDaily.

Others' responses to the claims

It is disputed whether there was an occasion for the alleged exchange to occur. According to Brit Hume of Fox News, "Vallely and Wilson appeared on the same day nine times in 2002, and on the same show twice — on September 8 and September 12, when both men appeared within 15 minutes of one another." A compendium of the appearances by Wilson and Vallely on FOX posted in the political blog Crooks and Liars reveals, however, that there is only one possible date, September 12, 2002, during which the two would have been in the green room within hours of each other.

Denver criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, a legal analyst and frequent guest on Fox News and several other networks, who has personally been in their green rooms, asserts in her blog that September 12, 2006 is the only possibility, as well.

Former Naval intelligence officer and NSA analyst Wayne Madsen writes: "As someone who spent a fair amount of time at Fox News' Washington green room, I can say that . . . [w]hen you are booked by Fox to appear, a car is sent around to pick you up. The car arrives with enough time to transport you to the studios at 400 North Capitol Street, usually 15 minutes before air time. However, most of that time is spent checking in and sitting for makeup. If you happen upon another guest in the green room before sitting for makeup, they are likely only minutes from air time –– certainly not enough time to engage in a biographical rendition about your family with a total stranger. If two guests appeared at the same time at Fox in Washington, they were taken to different studios."

According to the investigation by Media Matters for America, contradicting such allegations by Batchelor on his radio show, it has become clear that he did not have any such firsthand experience of his own pertaining to Wilson's wife's "employment".

Former CIA officer Larry C. Johnson strongly questions the credibility of both Generals, posting on his own blog No Quarter:

I too was a Fox News Contributor in 2002 and spent a lot of time in the Green Room with both Vallely and McInerney. I saw them but never saw Joe Wilson. What is really curious is that I know I spent more time with Vallely and McInerney than Joe Wilson ever did and the subject of my wife (or their wives) never came up.

Moreover, the claims of both Vallely and McInerney that Valerie Wilson's classified affiliation with the CIA was generally well known outside the intelligence community in Washington, D.C., is contradicted by the 28 Oct. 2005 Office of the Special Counsel indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as already cited above:

At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. ("Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson" 3; italics added).

Consequences of Armitage acknowledging his role in leak

In their recent book Hubris, Michael Isikoff and David Corn assert that it was Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, who first revealed that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA to Robert Novak sometime before July 8, 2003. In late August 2006, along with advance publicity for the book, news accounts and editorials began focusing on that public revelation:

Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday [August 29, 2006].

An editorial published in the Washington Post on September 1, 2006 headlined "End of an Affair" proclaims "It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband," opining further:

It now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming — falsely, as it turned out — that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

As reported by Legal News TV, aware that he too has now been added to the civil suit brought against Rove, Libby, and Cheney by Joe and Valerie Wilson, Armitage seemed explicitly contrite:

Revealing himself as the source who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative just got Richard Armitage sued.

Though the former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage expressed regrets and apologies in media interviews, Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson amended their lawsuit to add Armitage as a defendant along with Vice President Dick Cheney and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Yet, unlike the allegations leveled against his co-defendants, the couple does not allege that Armitage intentionally leaked Plame's identity to punish the couple for Wilson's criticisms of the Administration's policy in Iraq. According to the amended complaint, Armitage acted independently of his White House colleagues, but nonetheless violated Plame's right to privacy.

"There wasn't a day when I didn't feel like I had let down the president, the secretary of state, my colleagues, my family and the Wilsons. I value my ability to keep state secrets. This was bad and I really felt badly about this."

In a column posted in TownHall.com on 14 September 2006, however, Novak disputes details of Armitage's recent media accounts of their conversations, offering a politically-charged reinterpretation of their past and present contexts:

When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president's lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the Left.

Despite Robert Novak's own conclusion that the identification of Armitage is "devastating news" for "the Left" in its attempts to corroborate what Novak calls the "left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson," former Ambassador Wilson continues to enjoy support among investigative journalists and others in both the mainstream media and the alternative media who believe that such a "conspiracy" did exist and that its cover up may still exist, such as Frank Rich (The Greatest Story Ever Sold) and Robert Parry ("U.S. Press Bigwigs Screw Up, Again" and "How Obtuse Is the U.S. Press?").

In the "October/November Preview" published in the American Journalism Review (Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park) and aptly entitled "Whatever," AJR's editor and senior vice president Rem Rieder similarly observes the "collective yawn" with which the mainstream media appears to have greeted the disclosure that it was Richard Armitage who was Robert Novak's "primary source" in "Plamegate."

Citing "a column agreeing with readers that his paper had underplayed Armitage and that the story belonged out front," Rieder says that "Kansas City Star Readers' Representative Derek Donovan put it well: 'Questioning – even suspicion – of those in power is a dearly-held American tradition, and many critical eyes have long, and I think rightly, focused on Rove's political influence at the White House. 'But that's not the issue here. From a simple standpoint of reporting news equitably, I think the Armitage revelation merited more prominent play.'"

Rieder himself wonders rhetorically:

So why the lame response? The easy answer, and a popular one on the right, is that much-ballyhooed liberal bias of the media. And there's no doubt an episode like this gives great ammunition to those who see the press as a bunch of card-carrying, fire-breathing lefties.

But I'm not buying it. Is that the same bunch of pinkos who were so cowed after 9/11, so credulous in their coverage of WMD? The same ones who brought us the Monica Lewinsky circus? (OK, lying about sex under oath is bad, but worse than leading a nation into an optional war with a dubious rationale, far too few troops and no plans for what to do after the fighting stops?) Or, speaking of long-running, high-profile "scandals" about not so much, the ones who wallowed in Whitewater?

Maybe it's simply a matter of embarrassment. After so much breathless coverage of supposed White House character assassination, maybe the MSM just kind of hoped the whole thing would go away.

Whatever the reason, it was a curious and disappointing performance.

Debate as to the merits of Joe Wilson's claims in The Politics of Truth appears to remain ongoing, and the Wilsons' civil lawsuit against past and present officials of the Bush administration is still unresolved as it moves through the U.S. legal justice system.

Support for Wilson

In "A White House Smear," based in part on an interview with Ambassador Wilson and published in The Nation on 15 July 2003, David Corn asks:

Is it relevant that Wilson's wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig [to Niger]? Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife's interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife's role—if she had one—has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.

. . . .

The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.

Like Isikoff and Corn, later journalists in the mainstream media, independent journalists, interviewed CIA agents, and other skeptics of the George W. Bush administration still vigorously dispute its frequently-repeated claims and earlier testimony of some CIA agents that the purchase of the aluminum tubes by Iraq constitutes proof of a renewed nuclear enrichment program for the eventual production of weapons of mass destruction. Such ongoing questioning of these controversial and hotly-debated claims tends to support Wilson's arguments about such rationales for the 2003 invasion of Iraq being part of a "fabric of lies, distortions, and misinformation that it [the administration] had woven and fed the world to justify its war" in his 2004 book The Politics of Truth (414-15).

As Robert Parry observes:

Now, based on a new report about Armitage’s role in leaking Plame’s identity, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading U.S. news organizations are joining in a new campaign to disparage those who harbored suspicions about the Bush administration’s actions – from special prosecutor Fitzgerald to former Ambassador Wilson.

For these national journalists who act as if they are oblivious to all the evidence of a long-running White House smear campaign and cover-up, it might be time to pose the "Shawshank Redemption" question: "How can you be so obtuse?"

Of course, in the movie, the warden really wasn’t "obtuse." He just wanted to keep benefiting from [his prisoner] [Andy] Dufrense’s financial skills and, most importantly, to protect his corrupt schemes. The motives of the Washington news media may be more of a mystery. ("How Obtuse Is the U.S. Press?")

Ian Buruma argues, in his New York Times Book Review of Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold:

Newspaper editors should not have to feel the need to prove their patriotism, or their absence of bias. Their job is to publish what they believe to be true, based on evidence and good judgment. As Rich points out, such journals as The Nation and The New York Review of Books were quicker to see through government shenanigans than the mainstream press. And reporters from Knight Ridder got the story about intelligence fixing right, before The New York Times caught on. "At Knight Ridder," Rich says, "there was a clearer institutional grasp of the big picture."

Intimidation is only part of the story, however. The changing nature of gathering and publishing information has made mainstream journalists unusually defensive. That more people than ever are now able to express their views, on radio shows and Web sites, is perhaps a form of democracy, but it has undermined the authority of editors, whose expertise was meant to act as a filter against nonsense or prejudice. And the deliberate confusion, on television, of news and entertainment has done further damage. ("Theater of War" 11, col. 1)

The Libby Trial

Statement by the Wilsons in response to verdict in Libby trial

Main article: United States v. Libby § Verdict

In response to the verdict on March 6, 2007, finding Lewis Libby guilty of four of the five charges in the Fitzgerald grand jury indictment against him, the Wilsons issued a statement in a press release posted on the website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. It begins:

First, Valerie and Joseph Wilson would like to express their appreciation to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and the entire team of federal prosecutors for their professionalism and hard work. Their prosecution of a senior White House official illustrates that we are a nation of laws and that no man is above the law. The Wilsons respect the jury’s verdict and thank the jurors for their service. The entire Wilson team is pleased by today’s verdict and believes that justice has been served in this case.

Their statement continues by presenting Joseph Wilson's and Valerie E. Wilson's ongoing commitment to pursuing their civil suit against Libby and the other defendants charged in it:

The Wilsons will continue to pursue the civil case against Vice President Cheney, Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove and Mr. Armitage because it hinges on additional and different facts from those underlying the criminal case. The criminal trial was about whether or not Mr. Libby obstructed justice and committed perjury by lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about the fact that he had disclosed to reporters that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA. The civil suit, on the other hand, hinges on whether or not the defendants violated the constitutional rights of Valerie and Joe Wilson by making those disclosures in a concerted effort to retaliate against Joe Wilson for revealing the falsity of the president’s rationale for the Iraq war.

Their perspective on the matters still before the courts is as follows:

Disturbing facts emerged from the criminal trial that are highly relevant to the civil case. For example, the American public learned details of how Vice President Cheney orchestrated the concerted White House effort to discredit and retaliate against Joe Wilson. Towards that end, the vice president enlisted the aid of other senior administration officials including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, vice presidential assistant Cathie Martin and presidential advisor Karl Rove. Testimony in the criminal case also confirmed that Mr. Libby spoke to numerous reporters in an effort to persuade at least one of them to publicly reveal Mrs. Wilson’s covert status.

The statement concludes by quoting Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and counsel to the Wilsons: "'The civil case may provide the American public with its only opportunity to hear directly from Vice President Cheney, Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove and Mr. Armitage about what really took place behind the scenes after Joe Wilson exposed the truth about the administration’s justification for the Iraq war.'"

Reaction to Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence

Main article: United States v. Libby § Presidential commutation of Libby's prison sentence

Main article: Lewis Libby clemency controversy

Following President George W. Bush's July 2, 2007 commutation of Lewis Libby's prison sentence, Wilson was interviewed on Democracy Now!. Asked for his reaction to the commutation, he said:

I believe that the President is corrupt to the core, and his administration is corrupt from top to bottom. I think, in doing this, he has actively subverted the rule of law and the system of justice in our country, which has undergirded our democracy for 231 years. It's a disgrace. I believe that it casts a pall over him and his office and begs a question of what was the quid pro quo and whether or not he is now an active participant in an ongoing obstruction of justice in the cover up of the lies that they used to justify our invasion, conquest and occupation of Iraq in the first place.

...the special prosecutor in this case, representing the US government, said that Libby had blatantly and repeatedly lied, and as a consequence, sand had been thrown in the eyes of the umpire, by which he meant he was unable to get to the facts surrounding the underlying crime, the betrayal of the national security of our country. And Mr. Fitzgerald said that there remained a cloud over the Vice President and over his office.

Now, with his sentence commuted, Mr. Libby now no longer has any incentive whatsoever to begin to tell the truth to the special prosecutor, to wipe that sand from the umpire’s eyes, and to either lift that cloud over the Vice President or let it rain on him. So this is much more than just a commutation of Mr. Libby's sentence. This is a cover-up of the Vice President's role in this matter and quite possibly the role of the President and/or some of his senior White House advisers.

When Keith Olbermann interviewed him on the MSNBC television program Countdown with Keith Olbermann on the night of July 2, 2007, Wilson expressed his and others' outrage further:

There is nothing this administration does that shocks me anymore - it is corrupt from top to bottom.

... American citizens were outraged that the president of the United States would short circuit the rule of law and the system of justice.

... We know in America the difference between right and wrong, even if this administration doesn't.

Wilson also complained (as he has done before) that the President's action and others' actions leading to President Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence could seriously damage United States national security by harming its intelligence capability - "for the CIA, its covert officers, and for the agents that are recruited by officers, those who would put their lives at risk in order to obtain the intelligence we need will think long and hard about it when they see that the administration with impunity will betray its covert officers, will engage in treason."

Further information: Lewis Libby § Presidential commutation of prison sentence

Warner Bros. feature film

On the evening of the verdict in the Libby trial, Joseph C. Wilson appeared on Larry King Live, during which he announced that he and his wife had "signed a deal with Warner Bros of Hollywood to offer their consulting services - or maybe more - in the making of the forthcoming movie about the Libby trial," their lives and the CIA leak scandal. According to an article by Michael Fleming published in Variety earlier in the week, the feature film, a co-production between Weed Road's Akiva Goldsman and Jerry and Janet Zucker of Zucker Productions with a screenplay by Jez and John Butterworth to be based in part on Valerie Wilson's forthcoming book "Fair Game" (contingent on CIA clearances), is scheduled for release in August 2007.

The Wilsons' civil suit

Main article: Valerie Plame § The Wilsons' civil suit

Main article: Lewis Libby § The Wilsons' civil suit

Main article: Plame v. Cheney

On July 13, 2006, a civil suit was filed by Joseph and Valerie Wilson against Vice President Dick Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, top Presidential advisor Karl Rove, and other unnamed senior White House officials (among whom they later added Richard Armitage), for their role in the public disclosure of Valerie Wilson's classified CIA status. On September 13, 2006, Joseph and Valerie Wilson amended their original lawsuit, adding Richard Armitage as a fourth defendant. Unlike their charges against Rove, Cheney, and Libby, "claiming that they had violated her constitutional rights and discredited her by disclosing that she was an undercover CIA operative," the Wilsons sued Armitage "for violating the 'Wilsons' constitutional right to privacy, Mrs. Wilson's constitutional right to property, and for committing the tort of publication of private facts.'"

Case Dismissed

United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John D. Bates, who had been appointed by George W. Bush, dismissed the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds on July 19, 2007, stating in his forty-one page "Memorandum Opinion" that while it raises "important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials," the Wilsons had not shown that the case belonged in federal court. Bates also stated that "The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory. ... But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials...." As Carol Leonnig reports, Bates "also ruled that his court lacks the power to award damages for the claims about public disclosure of private information about Plame, because the couple has not yet exhausted other remedies in seeking compensation from the appropriate federal agencies for those alleged violations."

Appeal

According to the Wilsons' legal counsel, Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), in her statement posted on the Wilsons' website, they would be reviewing the decision and anticipated appealing it. As reported by Richard B. Schmitt in The Los Angeles Times, Ms. Sloan said that

Bates' decision recognized that the Wilsons' claims posed "important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials." ... But, she said, the judge dismissed their lawsuit on a threshold legal issue centered on the difficulty of suing a federal official. ... "While we are obviously very disappointed by today's decision, we have always expected that this case would ultimately be decided by a higher court." Sloan said. "We disagree with the court's holding and intend to pursue this case vigorously to protect all Americans from vindictive government officials who abuse their power for their own political ends."

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson stated, in an e-mail message, "This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me. ... We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation. Today's decision is just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are committed to seeing this case through."

On July 20, 2007, Ms. Sloan and the Wilsons announced publicly that they had filed an appeal of the U.S. District Court's decision to dismiss their law suit.

See also

• Downing Street memo
• Lewis Libby
• Niger uranium forgeries
• Plame affair
• Plame affair timeline
• Plame v. Cheney
• September Dossier (Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government)
• Valerie E. Wilson

References

• "Action Alert: Intelligence Manipulation at the Washington Post: Paper's Editorial Page Ignores Facts to Back Bush". Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 13, 2006.
• "Activism Update: Washington Post Responds to Critics: 'Two Views' of the Truth?" Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 19, 2006.
• "A Bad Leak". The New York Times, April 16, 2006, Editorial. Accessed November 18, 2006.
• Bedard, Paul. "Washington Whispers: Wilson Adds Ammo to Hit War Credibility Gap". US News & World Reports, October 20, 2003. Accessed November 19, 2006.
• Burns, John F. "Confrontation in the Gulf: Iraq Backs Off Its Threat to Execute Diplomats Who Hide Civilians". The New York Times, September 28, 1990: A6. Accessed November 19, 2006. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Bush, George W. State of the Union Address. Press release and transcript. whitehouse.gov, January 28, 2003.
• Duelfer, Charles. Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka Duelfer Report). cia.gov, September 30, 2004. Accessed September 22, 2006.
• Continetti, Matthew. "'A Little Literary Flair': Joe Wilson Wasn't a Truth-teller". The Weekly Standard, July 26, 2004.
• Cooper, Matthew, Massimo Calabresi, and John F. Dickerson. "A War on Wilson?" Time, July 17, 2003. Accessed July 23, 2007.
• Corn, David. "Novak vs. Armitage: Was the Plame Leak Deliberate?" The Nation, September 13, 2006. Accessed September 19, 2006.
• –––. "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA". The Nation, September 18, 2006 (Web Only). Accessed September 24, 2006.
• –––. "A White House Smear". The Nation, July 15, 2003. Accessed September 23, 2006.
• –––, and Michael Isikoff. Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown, 2006.
• Diamond, John. "Scandal Grew from Dispute Over Uranium". USA Today, October 30, 2005. Accessed February 8, 2007. [Inc. "2003 photograph for the opening spread of Vanity Fair. Jonas Karlsson, Vanity Fair," by Ward, as listed below.]
• Ehrenreich, Ben. "Unfair Game: Joseph Wilson on the Cost of Telling the Truth in Washington". Interview with Joseph C. Wilson. LA Weekly, October 30, 2003. Accessed November 18, 2006.
• "End of an Affair: It Turns Out That the Person Who Exposed CIA Agent Valerie Plame Was Not Out to Punish Her Husband". The Washington Post, September 1, 2006, Editorial. Accessed September 23, 2006.
• Fleischer, Ari. Press gaggle news release. whitehouse.gov, July 7, 2003.
• "A Good Leak: President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq. Is that a scandal?" The Washington Post, April 9, 2006, Editorial.
• Hitchens, Christopher. "Plame's Lame Game: What Ambassador Joseph Wilson and His Wife Forgot to Tell Us about the Yellow-cake Scandal". Slate, July 13, 2004.
• Isikoff, Michael, and David Corn. Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown, 2006. ISBN 0-307-34681-1.
• Kennedy, Ted. "The Neverending Saga of Phase II" kennedy.senate.gov. Rpt. from The Nation, August 9, 2006.
• Johnson, Larry C., "Plame Update". No Quarter (blog), October 5, 2005. Accessed September 28, 2005. [Incl. timeline.]
• –––. "Trying to Smear Joe Wilson". No Quarter (blog), November 8, 2005. Accessed September 19, 2006.
• Leiby, Richard. "Man Behind the Furor: Wilson: Envoy with an Independent Streak". Washington Post, October 1, 2003, A01. Rpt. in Wilson Bio. u-r-next.com n.d. Accessed September 26, 2006.
• May, Clifford D. "Our Man in Niger: Exposed and Discredited, Joe Wilson Might Consider Going Back". National Review Online, July 12, 2004. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• Novak, Robert. "Armitage's Leak". TownHall.com, September 14, 2006. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• –––. "Errant Former Ambassador". CNN, July 15, 2004. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• –––. "Mission to Niger". Washington Post, July 14, 2003:A21. Posted online October 20, 2005. Accessed September 20, 2006.
• Parry, Robert. "How Obtuse Is the U.S. Press?" ConsortiumNews.com (The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc), September 3, 2006. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• –––. "U.S. Press Bigwigs Screw Up, Again." ConsortiumNews.com (The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc), September 14, 2006. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• Powell, Colin. "Defending Claims". Transcript from the Online NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. PBS,July 7, 2003. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• Rich, Frank. The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina. New York: Penguin Press, 2006. ISBN 1-59420-098-X. Rev. by Ian Buruma, "Theater of War." New York Times September 17, 2006, sec. 7. (Book Rev.): 1, 10.
• Roberts, Pat. "Additional Views of Chairman Pat Roberts joined by Senator Christopher S. Bond, Senator Orrin G. Hatch" on the Senate Intelligence Report. July 9, 2004. Rpt. on GlobalSecurity.org. (No longer archived at original location on Roberts' Senate website. Such press releases are posted on the website of the Senate Intelligence Committee.) Related press releases rpt. on UK site Acronym. [See comments by Matthew Continetti, Susan Schmidt, Clifford May, Robert Novak, and Joseph Wilson also listed herein.]
• –––. "Statement on Niger". Press release of July 11, 2003.
• Rupert, James. "Diplomats Struggle On In Saddam's Capital: Main Task Is Aiding U.S. Hostages". [The Washington Post]] October 3, 1990: A25.
• Schmidt, Susan. "Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mssion". The Washington Post, July 9, 2004: A09. [Online registration required.]
• U.S. Senate Select Committee. Template:PDFlink. intelligence.senate.gov July 7, 2004. Cf. Template:PDFlink July 9, 2004. Accessed September 13, 2006.
• Ward, Vicky. "Double Exposure: As White House Powerhouse Karl Rove Becomes Increasingly Entangled in the C.I.A. Officer-outing Affair, VF.com Reprises This January 2004 Article on the Iraq-weapons Controversy That Embroiled Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and His Wife, Valerie Plame—Both of Whom Opened Up to Vanity Fair". Vanity Fair, January 2004. Rpt. vanityfair.com. Accessed February 16, 2007. (11 pages.) Also accessible as "Double Exposure: Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and His Wife, C.I.A. Operative Valerie Plame, Are at the Center of Controversy Over President Bush's Bogus Claim, in Last Year's State of the Union Address, That Saddam Had Tried to Buy Uranium in Africa". accessmylibrary.com, January 1, 2004. Accessed May 5, 2007 (original text). (See Diamond, as listed above, for photo.)
• Washington Post Editorial Board. "The Libby Verdict: The Serious Consequences of a Pointless Washington Scandal". The Washington Post, March 7, 2007. Accessed May 5, 2007.
• Wheeler, Marcy. Anatomy of Deceit: How the Bush Administration Used the Media to Sell the Iraq War and Out a Spy. Berkeley: Vaster Books (Dist. by Publishers Group West), 2007. ISBN 0-979-17610-7 (10). ISBN 978-0979-17610-4 (13).
• Wilson, Joseph C., IV. "'Administration Went After Me and My Wife'". Miami Herald, [May 2]], 2004. Rpt. in the Common Dreams NewsCenter.
• –––. "A Conversation with Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV". Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, November 9, 2005. Video clip. (1 hr., 21 mins., 46 secs.) Uploaded on September 25, 2006 via Google Video/UC Berkeley, Educational Technology Services. Accessed February 14, 2007.
• –––. "Debunking Distortions about My Trip to Niger". Washington Post, July 17, 2004. Accessed September 19, 2006.
• –––. "Joseph Wilson's Letter to the Senate: The former Ambassador Responds to Allegations by Republican Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report Challenging His Credibility". AlterNet, July 19, 2004. [Reply to Senators Roberts, Bond, and Hatch.]
• –––. The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Put the White House On Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. Paperback ed., 2005. ISBN 0-7867-1551-0.
• –––. "A Right-Wing Smear Is Gathering Steam: Ex-envoy Says the GOP Has Targeted Him and His Wife". The Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2004. Rpt. in the Common Dreams NewsCenter. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• –––. "Seeking Honesty in U.S. policy". The San Jose Mercury News, September 14, 2003. Rpt. in the Common Dreams NewsCenter.
• –––. "What I Didn't Find in Africa". New York Times, July 6, 2003, Op-Ed. Accessed July 23, 2007. (TimesSelect subscription required). Rpt. "What I Didn't Find in Africa". Common Dreams NewsCenter. Accessed September 17, 2006.
• –––. "Statement in Response to Jury's Verdict in U.S. v. I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby". Press release. Online posting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), 6 March, 2007. Accessed 6 March, 2007.

Other related external links

• "Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV" biography at PBS.org, February 28, 2003. Accessed July 23, 2007.
• "Bill Moyers Talks to Joseph C. Wilson, IV". Transcript of interview. PBS.org, February 28, 2003. Accessed July 23, 2007.
• "CNN Larry King Live Interview With Joseph Wilson". "Rush Transcript". Larry King Live, May 3, 2004. Accessed July 29, 2007.
• Interactive Graphic: Timeline of a Leak in The New York Times online (NYTimes.com).
• Joseph C. Wilson 4th from Times Topics (NYTimes.com).
• "Joseph Wilson". Biography at Greater Talent Network Inc. (Speakers Bureau). Accessed July 24, 2007.
• Joseph and Valerie Wilson Legal Support Trust (Home). Accessed July 20, 2007.
• Office of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
• The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, by Joseph Wilson. Website featuring excerpts from the book, interviews, and reviews, a news archive, and hyperlinked "Bibliography" (Copyright © 2004, Carroll & Graf Publishers & Joseph Wilson).
• "Profile: Joseph C. Wilson IV" at SourceWatch (A Project of the Center for Media & Democracy). Updated March 7, 2007. Accessed July 23, 2007.
• "Transcript of Chat with Ambassador Joe Wilson". Excerpted and rpt. from JohnKerry.com in online posting by "Aaron Loyd" (Administrator) in the Forum of Democrats.US™: Online Think Tank for Democrats, October 29, 2003. Accessed July 29, 2007. ("Democrats.US™ is a political news and discussion website run by loyal Democrats.")