The White House's handling of the Wilson revelations is not only disgusting, it's criminal and immoral. Worse, it's an act of treason. Here's a President and his administration willing to tar a CIA agent over its own bad judgement and in the process risk the lives of other CIA agents. They should find the bastards that "outed" this agent and throw the book at them (it's certified treason). How much do you want to bet that Bush pardons the White House people responsible for this like his old man did with all the Iran Contra gang? And this boob ran on the platform of bringing "honor and intigrity" back to the White House. The only thing he brought with him to the job was a spoiled, stupid rich kid's sense of entitlement and a false feeling of superiority to reality.

August 8, 2003
WEAPONS INTELLIGENCE
Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador who was a secret envoy of the Bush administration to Africa and who publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program, says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.

In the prewar effort to uncover information about weapons in Iraq, Mr. Wilson made a fact-finding trip to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency. His findings challenged contentions in an unsubstantiated document that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear-weapons material from the West African country.

But it was not until after Mr. Wilson made his account public last month in an op-ed article in The New York Times, to the intense discomfort of President Bush's aides, that the White House acknowledged that it had erred in including the disputed accusations in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address in January.

Days after the column, another chapter opened. Mr. Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials.

Officials are barred by law from disclosing the identities of Americans who work undercover for the C.I.A. That provision is intended to protect the security of operatives whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities are known.

Among those who have cried foul are several Democratic senators, including Charles E. Schumer of New York, who have said that if the accusation is true and if senior administration officials were its source, law enforcement authorities should seek to identify the officials who appeared to have violated the law. Mr. Schumer has asked Robert S. Mueller III, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to look into the case.

Mr. Wilson, who as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad in 1990 was the last American diplomat to meet President Saddam Hussein, said the events were evidence of distressing American heavy-handedness.

"The issue was never about her," Mr. Wilson said of his wife in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "The issue was about who so badly staffed the president of the United States that they would put into a State of the Union address something that was so transparently unsubstantiable, and this from an administration that came to office saying it wanted to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It wasn't to intimidate me, because I'd already said my piece. Clearly, this was to keep others from stepping forward."

White House officials have said they would not condone disclosing any undercover C.I.A. operative.

In the run-up to the war, Mr. Wilson appeared frequently on television as an expert on Iraq. He freely offered his opinion that the best American policy would be to postpone any war and focus on intense international inspections to find weapons of mass destruction.

That opinion certainly won him no friends in the administration, which was arguing that the moment for inspections had passed.

The fact that a retired American envoy had traveled to Niger to look into an Iraqi connection was acknowledged by the administration this year. But Mr. Wilson said he had decided to discuss his role publicly early last month after concluding that efforts by senior administration officials, including Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to pass off his findings as having been shared just with low-ranking intelligence officials were "simply inconsistent" with the facts that he knew.

"It was pretty clear that it had gotten to the right people," Mr. Wilson said in the interview.

The deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, has publicly taken responsibility for the inclusion in the State of the Union speech of 16 words that repeated the disputed reports about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Niger.

Mr. Wilson, who had told the C.I.A. and the State Department after his visit that there was no basis for that report, said in the interview that he had "tried to avoid taking a victory lap" after his comments prompted the White House acknowledgments. But he had begun to speak out again, in television interviews including one on "Today" on NBC, "until such time as you got those lowlifes over there deciding they would take some whacks at my wife."

Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is known to friends as an energy industry analyst. In the interview, Mr. Wilson said he had no doubt that those who sought to bring his wife into the controversy intended to sound a warning to others who might take on the White House on the charged issue of whether intelligence about Iraq was reshaped or ignored to fit a political agenda.

Mr. Novak cited administration officials as saying Mr. Wilson was chosen for the Niger mission because of Ms. Plame's connection to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Wilson said his qualifications — as an Africa expert, a former ambassador to Gabon and the senior director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton — made him more than amply suited for the task.

The broad issue of whether intelligence information about Iraq, its weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism was subjected to undue influence is under investigation by the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence.

Among current intelligence analysts questioned by the committee staffs, just one, Christian P. Westermann of the State Department, has been identified by name as having said Mr. Wilson perceived political pressure in his work on Iraq. Some other former and current intelligence officials who have spoken to reporters have made broadly similar charges.

Mr. Wilson said the Niger trip was prompted by an inquiry from Vice President Dick Cheney to a C.I.A. briefer. The conclusion that there was no basis to the report on nuclear materials was also reached by the United States Embassy in Niamey, the capital, and by an American general who visited there about the same time.




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