I accuse

It's clear to me that the guys who did that were the Ralph Reed crowd and the people running Bush's campaign. Let's see, that would be Karl Rove and the "iron triangle," as they called them.

Was that an early warning of what they would later do to you?

I guess it should have been. I assumed that when the president takes office, there's a certain decorum that may not exist when you're running a hard-fought campaign. There may be dirty pool in a political campaign, but when you're president of the United States and your people do this against an American citizen -- who, by the way, had done nothing more than invite your attention to the truth -- when you do that to him, it's frankly un-American.

You suggest in the book that the president isn't really concerned about what happened to your wife, which is in real contrast with the way you believe his father would have acted under the same circumstances. How did we reach this level of polarization?

It's not what I think his father would have done, but what I know he would have done. I fought a war with him. We were in the foxhole! Look, I bear no personal animus toward the president, other than in his apparent disregard for Valerie's security. The only thing I can suggest is that this is a different crowd that surrounds this president. As most people know, the president is a captive of his team. People whom his father didn't employ, or kept far away from the center of power, are now right at the center of power -- including, of course, one of his father's great rivals, Don Rumsfeld.

Some of them were around the first President Bush, such as Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. You fought a war with them, too.

Cheney always likes to point out that he never met Joe Wilson. And as I like to point out, I never met Dick Cheney. During the first Gulf War, there is some question as to whether Cheney held what I consider to be the extremist views he holds today.

Has the White House offered any assistance to you and your wife, any protection?

No. None at all. Not even an apology or a by your leave. Not even a "Fuck you, asshole."

They sent that through other people. They've also tried to portray you, and all the other whistle-blowers who have spoken out against the administration, as partisan Democrats. Do you think that has been an effective technique?

It hasn't worked with me. People are touched by this story because it gives a human face to a whole host of lies and deceptions that only now are becoming apparent to the American public. Americans don't like this attitude. Americans don't like to see their women taken out and beaten up.

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