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An Open Letter to the Press: Tell the Truth About Joseph Wilson
MEDIA BLOG 10/24 07:50 PM
I sent an e-mail like this to a reporter who is covering the Plame investigation. I'll let you know if I get a response. In the meantime, feel free to send this e-mail to reporters you see peddling Wilson canards:
Why do you and many other reporters persist in using the following stock description Joseph Wilson:
Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who became a critic of the administration's Iraq policy by disputing the possibility that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium fuel from Niger.
In his July 6, 2003 op-ed, Mr. Wilson wrote that he had been sent to Niger to check out whether Saddam had actually purchased uranium, and that "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." According the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on pre-war intelligence, Wilson’s trip actually indicated that Baghdad had sought to buy uranium from Niger – he “told his CIA debriefers that during his Niger trip, he spoke to the country's former prime minister, who told him that members of an Iraqi delegation in the late 1990s expressed interest in expanded commercial contacts with Niger. The former prime minister told Wilson that he interpreted the comment to mean that Iraq was interested in buying uranium, although the word 'uranium' was not mentioned in the Iraqis' conversation, he said. The prime minister, fearful of United Nations sanctions that prevented trade with Iraq at the time, dropped the subject, Wilson reported" (Jacoby, Salon, 07/16/04). Wilson himself, in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote, “I never claimed to have ‘debunked’ the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur.”
Did you write that Wilson disputed something he did not dispute because to explain the true nature of his criticism would take too many words? Why not describe Wilson as follows:
Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who became a critic of the administration's Iraq policy by disputing the possibility that Saddam Hussein's regime actually bought uranium fuel from Niger.
That description has the added benefit of using fewer words. In addition, it shows that Wilson's claim did not contradict the administration's claim that Saddam had sought to purchase uranium from Niger — a claim that Wilson's report actually bolstered. Can you please clarify why this canard, well-documented by liberal media critic Bob Somerby, has gone uncorrected for so long?
If we don't do something to stop this error from being repeated over and over in the media, it will simply become fact. If indictments are handed down, public interest in the Plame case will skyrocket. People who have never heard of Joseph Wilson will suddenly start hearing his name. If the press continues to whitewash his credibility issues, people will actually think he was some kind of truth-telling whistleblower, rather than a lying CIA plant.
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