Valerie Plame Wilson - Josh Marshall Interviews Amb. Wilson

Josh Marshall interviews Ambassador Wilson in a wide-ranging discussion that does get to the question of his wife having been outed by the Administration.

Here is our timeline; when last we looked, the Ambassador was backpedaling from his suggestion that it was Karl Rove that outed his wife. And (spoiler alert), he remains firmly back-pedaled in this interview.

Now, some points upon which Mr. Marshall and the Ambassador might benefit from a bit of clarification:

TPM: Now, as you've described your report--and a number of administration figures latched onto this one comment--and my recollection is that in speaking to one of the former government ministers, this person discussed that there was an earlier time when there seemed to be a feeler from the Iraqis about restarting trade relations. And since this country doesn't have a lot of prized goods for international trade, that this may have been a feeler about a potential uranium sale. Now, I believe that Condi Rice and perhaps even Paul Wolfowitz mentioned this, and they took this to mean, "Look, even Joe Wilson says the Iraqis tried to get back in with Niger, and even possibly about uranium."

Well, George Tenet says it was in the CIA report, so it wasn't just Condi and Paul.

Marshall: ...Robert Novak published a column, where he said that two senior administration officials had told him that your wife works for the CIA, works under non-official cover--which basically, in sort of colloquial terms, means that she's an undercover agent--and that her relationship with you was, in some sense, what got you the job to go to Niger.

What Novak wrote:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

Amb. Wilson eventually half-corrects Dr. Wilson:

WILSON: First of all, the Novak allegation is very interesting. If I recall the article correctly, he flatly asserts my wife is a CIA operative. And then he quotes senior administration officials as saying that she was somehow responsible for sending me out there.

However, neither Dr. Marshall nor Amb. Wilson mention the presence of a CIA source in the Novak story.

Now, a misstatement of both the facts and the law by Dr. Marshall:

The other question--to many, the more significant one--is that it is illegal for government officials to out, as it were, people working undercover for the CIA. And according to just the black-letter words of what Novak published, two senior administration officials did just that.

Here is the relevant statute as mentioned (eventually) by Amb. Wilson - note the definition of "covert agent" requires that the person "is serving outside the United States or has within the five years served outside the United States." One may be undercover without being covert, depending on the timing of assignments.

WILSON: ...The CIA does not "out" its own. It just doesn't do that.

Fine. Why are they a source in the Novak piece?

WILSON: ...Secondly, I think that it's important to understand that if, in fact, she is what was alleged, then it is a violation of the Intelligence Agents Identification Act of 1982, which is a felony...

That depends, as previously noted.

WILSON: ...the decisions on the trip were made by people I didn't know, as I told you earlier.

Well, he told us that the people in the room were people he didn't know. He also tells us that his wife wouldn't want him to travel on business, and has no help; given her presumed job, and his as a consultant, this is silliness - he travels all the time, she works, of course she has help. [Mini-Update - his story changes by mid October; he doesn't know if she was involved, he doesn't discuss his wife's work at home.]

WILSON: ...The idea of involving my wife in this little spat that they're having with me because I was the bearer of bad tidings was neither honorable or dignified, quite apart from whether it was legal or illegal.

I agree. And is there something he wants to tell us about whether it was illegal?

On his suggestion that Karl Rove was the culprit, we get this:

WILSON: Yeah, and Karl Rove, when I said that, is sort of a metaphor for the White House political operation. And I--what I was saying in that was that I would do everything I could not to impede the investigation and try and help advance the investigation. Because after all, if there was somebody to--that was guilty of violation of a crime--it would be better to have them--and then I quoted Rove's name as a kind of a metaphor for the White House--"frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs" rather than just a sort of sterile exchange of he-said she-said newspaper articles and attacks.

Comments

[Jon Henke]

I appreciate your updates on this story. You've had excellent coverage....I've referred to it often.

Thanks.

[TM]

Thanks very much.