Spouse sees `stonewalling' in outing of CIA officer
By E.A. Torriero
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 4, 2004
The diplomat husband of an outed CIA operative said Thursday that he was "taken by surprise" when President Bush announced a decision to seek private counsel regarding a federal investigation into the White House's role in the matter.
"I don't know what it means," Joseph Wilson, a former acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Tribune's editorial board. "I have no specific information."
Wilson was in Chicago to promote his book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity."
His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003 after Novak was made aware of Plame's identity. Revealing the name of an undercover CIA officer can be a federal crime.
A federal grand jury is looking into whether White House sources or officials in the Bush administration leaked Plame's name. Wilson claims she was outed in retaliation for an op-ed piece he wrote in The New York Times debunking administration claims that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Bush told reporters Thursday at the White House that he might consult Jim Sharp, a Washington lawyer and ex-federal prosecutor.
"If I deem I need his advice, I'll probably hire him," Bush said, adding that he is willing to cooperate with the grand jury. "This is a criminal matter, it's a serious matter."
Bush has said from the outset of the scandal that the source of the leak may never be found.
"I want to know the truth," he said. "I'm willing to cooperate myself."
Wilson on Thursday reiterated claims in his book that the leak came after a White House meeting led by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. As in the book, Wilson supplied few details to back the claim, which the White House denies.
Wilson told the Tribune he figures that Bush has "plausible deniability." Wilson translates that to mean that Bush never uttered words launching a smear campaign against him.
"The White House is stonewalling at some level," he said.
Wilson was acting ambassador to Iraq on the eve of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The CIA secretly sent him to Niger in 2002 to check out rumors that the African nation was selling enriched uranium to Iraq. Wilson, who previously served in Niger as U.S. ambassador, said he found nothing.
Still, Bush used the claim of the Niger sale in his State of the Union address in 2003 to help convince Americans that Iraq constituted a threat to U.S. security.
"It was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States and the American people," Wilson said.
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