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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Joseph Wilson stood up to Saddam -- then to the Bush administration. The man who exposed the president's bogus uranium claim talks about why he spoke out and the White House's ugly "revenge" against him and his wife.
Oct 10, 2003 | In 1991, President George Bush introduced Joseph Wilson to his war Cabinet, calling the veteran diplomat "a true American hero." By any standard, Wilson deserved such praise. As the senior U.S. diplomat in Iraq during Operation Desert Shield, the massive U.S. military buildup in Saudi Arabia after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Wilson was responsible for freeing 150 American hostages seized by the Iraqi dictator. Indeed, he was the last U.S. diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein, in August 1990, following Saddam's notorious July 25 meeting with U.S. ambassador April Glaspie, who failed to warn Saddam not to invade Kuwait. Wilson advocated a muscular response to Saddam's aggression, and though he sought a diplomatic solution, supported Operation Desert Storm. During his highly decorated 23-year career, Wilson also held the position of political advisor to the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe and was ambassador to Gabon.
In July this year, Wilson staked out another claim to heroism when he revealed in a New York Times piece that Bush administration claims that Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium from the African nation of Niger were known by the Bush administration to be false. In February 2002 Wilson himself had been assigned by the CIA -- acting, ironically, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney -- to investigate the uranium allegations in an attempt to strengthen the administration's arguments for war. He reported back to his superiors that there was no basis for the claims. But in January 2003, to Wilson's amazement, President Bush made the same discredited claim in hyping the terrifying nuclear threat posed by Saddam. In the New York Times article, Wilson wrote that that "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."
Along with a host of other revelations about cherry-picked intelligence, bogus claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and arm-twisting from administration officials to find usable evidence, Wilson's bombshell made it clear that the Bush administration had decided to go to war first and come up with the justification for it second. As 9/11 hysteria faded, WMD failed to turn up and the invasion's aftermath turned brutally ugly, the fact that false evidence was used to sell the war became a major political problem for Bush. Questions about his leadership of the "war on terror" -- the heart of his appeal -- became louder. The GOP had to stop the bleeding. A decision was reached that the best way to do that was to take Wilson down.
On July 14, two senior administration officials told syndicated columnist Robert Novak, a reliably pro-GOP journalist, that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative and had been responsible for sending him to Niger. The message sent by the administration leakers was about as subtle as a Tony Soprano neck massage: Mess with us and we'll destroy you -- or your wife's career.
The political firestorm that erupted exposed a moral tawdriness in the White House and the national GOP that not even the president's most ardent supporters could deny. Revealing the name of a CIA agent is an extremely grave offense, and the leak undeniably came from the White House. Yet rather than expressing moral outrage and demanding the head of the guilty party or parties, the head of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie, actually went on a smear campaign against Wilson, telling talk shows that he was a Democrat with a partisan agenda who had given money to Al Gore's presidential campaign. (Gillespie failed to say that Wilson had also given money to George W. Bush's campaign, which Wilson supported for a time.) It was a shocking example of arrogance and moral myopia: Had the head of the Democratic Party during the Clinton years sunk to this level, it's almost impossible to even imagine the outraged reaction.
As for President Bush, after a few pro-forma statements that his administration would pursue an investigation ("spearheaded" by Attorney General John Ashcroft, who paid Karl Rove, Bush's political guru, $746,000 for direct-mail services in three political campaigns) he said on Tuesday, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. I don't have any idea." In the extremely close, leak-averse, hierarchical, on-message Bush White House, this bore a distinct resemblance, in terms of believability, to O.J. Simpson's claim that he was looking for Nicole's murderer.
Joseph Wilson spoke to Salon by phone from his office in Washington.
What was your first reaction when you read Robert Novak's column?
I'm not sure it's printable. Novak had called me about my wife for the confirmation that he needed -- and I of course didn't give it to him. So I was surprised when it came out. When I read the article, I guess my initial reaction was, What the hell does my wife's identity add to the story? And at the time I was not aware that the leaking of her name was a violation of a specific federal statute.
Was your wife put at immediate risk?
Well, our thinking on this was always how does this affect the national security. It wasn't until people started speaking out and saying maybe she's been put at risk by this -- after it blossomed into a big media story -- it wasn't until then that we started worrying about the crazies who might do something -- you know, the people who think the CIA has implanted transistors in their brains. That's when we started worrying a bit.
Have you taken any security steps to protect your wife?
We don't discuss any security measures that we might have taken.
When the president said earlier this week that we might never know who's responsible for the leak, what did that suggest to you?
Well, the thing that is important to understand in all of this is that it's not a crime that was committed against my wife or me -- it was a crime against the country. And I think the president and all of us need to think of it in those terms. But obviously to those in the CIA community who believe that there's been a breach of trust, I don't think the president's words will be reassuring.
Whether or not it's finally determined to be a criminal act, it's clear that there was a fair amount of administration pushing on this, pushing the story out to the press -- and for an administration that came to office promising to restore the honor and dignity of the White House and to change the tone, I think it's unprecedented to drag somebody's family members into a dispute just because you don't like what the husband has been saying.
Do you think the White House is serious about finding the culprit?
I don't know. I would hope so.
Do you have any doubts about Attorney General Ashcroft's impartiality as he directs the investigation?
It seems to me that the White House would want to make sure that any inquiry does not have even the perception of a potential conflict of interest. And so I think it's important that the administration seriously ask itself that question, given the privileged relations between members of the White House staff and the Justice Dept -- particularly between Attorney General Ashcroft and Mr. Rove.
Do you think there needs to be a special prosecutor to make sure the investigation is impartial?
I don't know -- I saw one poll that said the public wanted a special counsel by something like 70 percent. But I don't know. I think the White House has to answer that question to its own satisfaction, and ultimately to that of the American people.
Do you think Karl Rove knows who the culprit is, as you suggested earlier?
I never suggested that -- what I did suggest was that I intend to cooperate with any investigation that goes forward because I would like to see the culprit brought to justice, whether that culprit is Karl Rove who is frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs or somebody else. At the time that I made that statement (about Karl Rove), it was before the leak in the Washington Post that said there had been two officials who called six journalists about my wife. And my statement about Rove was predicated on the following: The act of leaking my wife's name to the press was a political act. The White House has a political office; the head of that political office is Mr. Rove. Now I can't tell you for certain that he would leak the identity of my wife to the press or even authorize the leak. But what I can tell you is that in the week after the Novak column appeared, I heard from several reporters that the White House was essentially pushing the story, that the White House was calling up the press and saying the real story here is Wilson and his wife, not the president's 16 infamous words [in his January State of the Union speech, alleging Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger]. And then finally I heard from another reporter who said he had just gotten off the phone with Karl Rove, who said to him, "Wilson's wife is fair game."
