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(Photo: AP)
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Joseph C. Wilson 4th served as ambassador to Gabon in the first Bush administration and later helped direct Africa policy for President Clinton's National Security Council. More recently, he had argued against using force in Iraq as opposed to strict containment. He was dispatched in February 2002 to explore whether Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, and returned to report he found no credible evidence. A month later, the CIA sent a cable to the White House saying Niger denied the uranium claim. Wilson's trip was not mentioned in the cable.
President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address included a 16-word passage stating that the British had learned that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa. In a New York Times op-ed piece published July 6, 2003, Wilson said he told the CIA long before Bush's address that the British reports were suspect. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," he wrote.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was identified as a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction in a column by columnist Robert Novak that ran a week after her husband's Times piece. Novak quoted anonymous government sources.
Also in July, Wilson's work in Niger came under scrutiny from the Bush administration, which said his report actually confirmed concerns the Iraqis were making overtures – rebuffed or not - to Niger, and also questioned why he did not investigate the forged documents. And according to a July 17, 2003, Time magazine article titled A War On Wilson?, "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger."
The Sept. 28, 2003, edition of The Washington Post quoted an unidentified senior administration official as saying two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed Plame's identity and occupation. Disclosing the identity of covert U.S. intelligence officers is a crime under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and the Justice Department opened an investigation into the leak.
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