I Can Recommend A Book To Joe Wilson

Joe Wilson told Wolf Blitzer on CNN Late Edition that Walter Pincus of the Washington Post "misattributed" a quote to Joseph Wilson in a story that was discussed in the Senate report on Iraq intelligence failures.

Wolf Blitzer wondered why Joe Wilson did not alert the Senate investigators to this, and why Mr. Wilson instead explained to them that he "misspoke". Wilson's explanation was that the investigators had not shown him the article to which they were referring.

I strongly urge Joe Wilson to run out and buy "The Politics of Truth" by the eponymous Joe Wilson. Since the book is written with "a little literary flair", I am sure he will be able to sustain his interest all the way to page 6, where he will see the June 12 Walter Pincus article both cited and excerpted, over the course of two paragraphs.

Fortunately for what remains of his credibility, the "misttributed" quote is not reprinted here.

And no, I am not able to explain why Mr. Wilson did not raise this issue of sloppy journalism in his letter to the Washington Post ombudsman. Mr. Getler responds to the issues he did raise here.

Let's excerpt a bit more from the Senate report, just to be clear about this:

The former ambassador said that he may have “misspoken” to the reporter when he said he concluded that the documents were “forged.” He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

That is a lot of misspeaking.

A fellow who might be interested is the WaPo ombudsman, Michael Getler: [email protected]

CNN Excerpt below:

BLITZER: So when the committee says that you told them you had misspoken, what did you misspeak?

WILSON: Well, actually, what I misspoke was, when I misspoke to the committee, when I spoke to the staff -- this interview took place 15 months after The Washington Post article appeared. I did not have a chance to review the article. They did not show me the article.

They threw it out there, and the question I took as being a rather generic question: Could you have misspoken? Yes, I am male, I'm over 50. By definition, I can misspeak. I have gone back since and taken a look at this particular article. It refers to an unidentified former government official. If it is referring to me, it is a misattribution, of facts that were already in the public domain and had been so since March.

UPDATE: Joe Wilson is meant to be on PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer on Monday night, and my TiVo is ready. My Bold Prediction - if he is asked about the "misattributed" charge, he will harrumph and retreat in the direction of something like "I was misunderstood - what I said was, based on the details included in my report, it should have been obvious that the documents were forgeries and that the names and the dates were wrong". The reporter's quote was accurate, but incomplete and hence misleading.

The Weekly Standard highlights the trail of tears and misunderstanding that followed the Ambassador around on this point. In his defense - as a diplomat, he is trained to obfuscate as well as communicate, and he loves to talk in extended hypotheticals. "I can't talk about my wife", he will say, yet five minute later he still is talking about his wife, and who can remember the qualifier?

This transcript with Katie Couric illustrates his problem, when he feels obliged to correct what Andrea Mitchell reported based on his earlier appearance.

Comments

[J Mann]

Wilson's in deep on this one. As the Weekly Standard pointed out yesterday, a *bunch* of journalists have come away from interviews with Wilson believing that his report stated that the Niger memo was a forgery.

1) On May 6, Nick Kristof reported that "In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information [of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal] was unequivocally wrong and that the documents [purporting to show such a deal] had been forged."

2) On June 30, Ackerman and Judis wrote, in an NPR cover story, "Cheney had given the information to the CIA, which in turn asked a prominent diplomat, who had served as ambassador to three African countries, to investigate. He returned after a visit to Niger in February 2002 and reported to the State Department and the CIA that the documents were forgeries. The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR. But, after a British dossier was released in September [2002] detailing the purported uranium purchase, administration officials began citing it anyway, culminating in its inclusion in the [2003] State of the Union. "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," the former ambassador tells TNR."

Now, maybe Wilson just has bad luck, and Kristof, Pincus, Ackerman, and Judis all independently and mistakenly walked away from their interviews with him believing that Wilson had detected the forgery himself, but I doubt it.

[Dacotti]

I'm no intel expert but I think I know what happened and why Wilson is being so elusive. His wife is a CIA counterintelligence analyist: What are the chances that she has NOT told him stuff that she shouldn't have? He accidently shoots off his mough about things that he has no way of knowing otherwise and then has to start obfuscating about where he learned them. His best bet would be to shut the hell up and stop talking to anyone about this.

[TM]

Dacotti, d'accord - reading through the lines of the Senate report, they were obviously puzzled about these forgeries (which are the focus of a separate FBI investigation), wondered why Wilson seemed to know more than he should about them, and wrote a cryptic, comic comment about his wife, the gist of which was, we don't criticize you for sending the husband of an employee, but we wish you hadn't.

Oh, here we go, p. 25:

The Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee traveling to Niger. The Committee believes, however, that it is unfortunate, considering the significant resources available to the CIA, that this was the only option available.

[Ernst Blofeld]

I emailed the WaPo ombudsman asking for a clarification on Pincus' reporting. Wilson has charged he was misattributed, and that's a serious reflection on Pincus and the paper. Perhaps they would like to clear that up and issue either a retraction for their reporting or a statement that they stand by their story.