Difference between revisions of "Joseph Wilson"

Revision as of 00:52, August 8, 2007

Template:Current

Joseph Charles Wilson IV (born November 6 1949) is a retired diplomat of the United States Foreign Service, who was posted to African nations and Iraq during the George H. W. Bush administratio. 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."^[1] Despite being wholly discredited – and, in some cases, found to have lied outright - Wilson has since become a speaker and activist on behalf of Democratic causes, including campaigning and working for Senator John F. Kerry in the 2004 election.

--- Work in Progress ---

Controversy over 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 Ambassador, Owens-Kirkpatrick, at the embassy, and was informed that she had already debunked that story. However, they agreed Wilson would interview dozens of officials who had been in the Niger government when the deal had supposedly taken place. Wilson ultimately concluded "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."[See Joseph C. Wilson IV, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," New York Times July 6, 2003, accessed September 17, 2006. The account given by Wilson in his "timeline" entitled "Events Surrounding the 'Sixteen Words' and the Disclosure of the Undercover Status of CIA Operative Valerie Plame, Wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson.”

Wilson and his wife have maintained that the CIA asked Wilson - without any input from Plame - to go to Niger and investigate the yellowcake claim. However, a CIA memo, shown here, details (in the circled portion) that Plame lied under oath when she told a House committee that she had no connection with Wilson's selection. The memo, written by Bush critic Carl Ford, Jr., states otherwise:

Notes: Niger/Iraq uranium meeting CIA 2/19/02

Meeting apparently convened by Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD managerial type and the wife of Amb. Joe Wilson, with the idea that the agency and the larger USG could dispatch Joe to Niger to use his contacts there to sort out the Niger/Iraq uranium sale question. Joe went to Niger in late 1999 in regard to Niger's uranium program, apparently with CIA support.

The "Report of the Selection Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq," released after the Democrats took control of Congress, states (page 211):

“Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. 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] 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.”

[See Report of the Selection Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq, http://intelligence.senate.gov/prewar.pdf]

Even The Washington Post noted that Plame was deeply involved in the selection of Wilson.

“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.

“Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

“Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

“The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And 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.”

[See "Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role," The Washington Post, 10 July 2004, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html]

But, according to the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report, Wilson also reported that, although former Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Assane Mayaki was unaware of any pending sales contract with Iraq, an Iraqi delegation had approached Mayaki in June 1999, expressing an interest in "expanding commercial relations." Mayaki believed this overture may have meant that they wanted to purchase yellowcake uranium –– one of Niger’s few exports –– but claimed that he refused to discuss any trade issues at all due to active UN sanctions on Iraq, and so steered the conversation in another direction.^[2]

The controversy surrounding Wilson began with President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address,^[3] 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."^[4] Documents unrelated to Wilson's trip and finding Iraq had made a yellowcake overture had been obtained by the U.S. Embassy in Rome on October 92002, and distributed throughout the U.S. intelligence community shortly thereafter, but not passed on to the IAEA until February 32003.^{[Citation Needed]} Two months later, documents suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, were judged to be "obvious" forgeries by the IAEA.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag

It was discovered, however, that Wilson told people that he was sent to Niger by Office of Vice President Dick Cheney. In fact, through a governmental investigation, Wilson got the position from his wife, former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, who continually holds to the story that Cheney’s office sent her husband, despite a memo and various reports from those inside the CIA. Aside from Wilson's and Plame’s arguments, the "Report of the Selection Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq," stated 1) that Plame and Wilson lied when they said that Plame was not the source of getting her husband sent to Niger, and 2) that a memo from the CIA proves Plame lied under oath before the US House Committee hearing on the alleged leak of her name.

^[5]

^[6]

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."^[7] On the Tucker Carlson Show on MSNBC, 18 July 2007, Novak divulged - for the first time - the shocking revelation that pro-Soviet spy Aldrich Ames had revealed Plame's name as a CIA operative years earlier - and for that reason her covert status was ended in 1996. The law that covers the exposing of a covert agent’s name allows for five years after the service ends, which means that the leaking of Plame’s name in 2003 came two years after she was protected.

The question remains: why has Wilson and Plame lied about the selection of Wilson for the Niger mission? After all, no matter why he was selected, he did go on the mission. The problem is, that if Plame did recommend her husband and this was the reason behind the selection, she could be prosecuted for violating strict government nepotism laws. Cliff Kincaid of the AIM Media Monitor wrote,

“One of the fascinating questions about the Valerie Plame affair is why Joseph Wilson lied about his wife's role in sending him on that mission to investigate the Iraq-uranium link. In his own book, ironically titled, The Politics of Truth, Wilson admits that if she played such a role, that might be a violation of federal nepotism laws. Of course, the special prosecutor is not investigating that. But Herbert Romerstein, a former professional staff member of the House Intelligence Committee, says there is another reason. And that is that her involvement in sending her husband on a CIA mission to Africa meant that when Wilson went public about it, foreign intelligence services would investigate all of his family members for possible CIA connections. Those intelligence services would not simply assume that he went on the mission because he was a former diplomat. They would investigate his wife. And that would inevitably lead to unraveling the facts about Valerie Wilson, or Valerie Plame, and her involvement with the CIA.”

^[1]

Additionally, the “leaking” of Plame’s name, could not have been a crime unless she was undercover – a fact which was confirmed to have ended in 2001, two years before Novak reported on Plame’s existence. Novak’s column set off a mad scramble inside the US government and the media to find the alleged leaker. Wilson intimated – without any proof – that Presidential advisor Karl Rove was behind the leak; Wilson demanded that Rove be arrested and “frog marched” out of his White House office. To this day, Rove has not been indicted for any role in the leak of Plame’s name, an episode referred to by some as “Plamegate.” In response to the story, Democrats demanded that a Special Prosecutor be named to find the leaker. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case, and it was left to Deputy Attorney General James Comey to name Patrick J. Fitzgerald as the Special Prosecutor, to discover who leaked the name and if it was a crime.

On or about September 26, 2003, the Department of Justice authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) to commence a criminal investigation into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA to various reporters in the spring of 2003. Although he has never spoken publicly, Fitzgerald received the name of the true leaker – Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of State – very early in the investigation. Instead of ending his investigation, Fitzgerald continued on, looking for those who had little or nothing to do with the leak, including several people inside the White House. In the end, Fitzgerald got an indictment against Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Irving Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice. During the trial, Fitzgerald never claimed that Libby was the leaker; however, on March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted of four of the five counts against him. ^[8] On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence but left his $250,000 fine intact.

In August 2006, after years of controversial speculation and an ongoing grand jury investigation, the general public learned from news reports and advance word of the book Hubris', by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that Novak's "primary source" of this information for his column of 14 July 2003 was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.^[9] Since that public disclosure, Novak has disputed several details of Armitage's account made in the latter's subsequent media interviews.^[10]

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.

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.”

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Joseph C. Wilson IV, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," New York Times July 6, 2003, accessed September 17, 2006.
2. ↑ Template:PDFlink, intelligence.senate.gov July 7, 2004; cf. Template:PDFlink July 9, 2004; both accessed September 13, 2006.
3. ↑ 2003 State of the Union Address
4. ↑ See, e.g, 16 Words (CNN) and "previous" link as provided by CNN.com.
5. ↑ "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Prewar Intelligence Assessments about Postwar Iraq," US Senate Intelligence Committee Report July 26, 2004, accessed July 10, 2007.
6. ↑ " Fact Checking Valerie Plame Wilson, Part 1 May 25, 2007, accessed July 10, 2007.
7. ↑ Robert Novak, "Mission to Niger," Washington Post, July 14, 2003:A21; posted online, October 20, 2005, accessed September 17, 2003.
8. ↑ Neil A. Lewis, "Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case," New York Times, March 6, 2007, accessed July 27, 2007.
9. ↑ Neil A. Lewis. "Source of C.I.A. Leak Said to Admit Role", New York Times, August 30, 2006. 
10. ↑ Robert Novak, "Armitage's Leak," TownHall.com September 14, 2006, accessed September 17, 2006.
11. ↑ "CIA Statement" by Director George Tenent
12. ↑ "Meet the Press"