Joseph Wilson

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 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." 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 Kerry in the 2004 election.