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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (29645)	10/5/2003 6:34:12 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Excellent post, lurqer. Wilson: Diplomat blaming White House for CIA leak is well respected By Darlene Superville The Associated Press sltrib.com WASHINGTON -- Joseph Wilson is not a typical cautious diplomat. Laid back, funny and frank, he has a surf club membership in keeping with his California roots and sports longish, graying hair. When the name of his CIA-employed wife of five years turned up in the newspapers, the career foreign service officer did not hesitate to assign blame where he says it belongs: the White House. Wilson says officials outed his wife to retaliate against him for criticizing President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The Justice Department is investigating his allegations. Friends describe Wilson as a straight shooter. While he acknowledges leaning Democratic, they also note his more than two decades of service to presidents of both political parties and say they did not know him to have anything against the Bush administration. "He may now have an ax to grind after they outed his wife, but he didn't start out with one," says Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state who worked on African affairs with Wilson during President Clinton's second term. "These people put his wife and kids in danger." Wilson worked for Al Gore when he was a senator and gave $1,000 to his presidential campaign in 1999. He also gave $1,000 to Bush's presidential campaign that same year. "He worked as assiduously for President Bush the elder as he did for President Clinton," says John Prendergast, who worked for Wilson when he was in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council during Clinton's second term. The CIA sent Wilson to Niger, where he had previously been posted, in February 2002 to look into intelligence reports that it had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s for possible use in a nuclear weapon. Wilson reported back that it was doubtful that such a sale had ever taken place. But Bush cited the report last January in his State of the Union speech. Wilson had criticized the run-up to the Iraq war in numerous television appearances and opinion pieces. In July, a year and a half after the Niger trip, he identified himself as the former ambassador who went on the mission. Shortly afterward, his wife's name -- Valerie Plame -- appeared in a syndicated column by journalist Robert Novak, who said it came from two senior administration officials. Before his wife's identity as a CIA operations officer became known, the 53-year-old Wilson, a dapper-dressing French speaker who sports cuff-linked sleeves and a breast-pocket kerchief, was perhaps best known as the last U.S. official to meet with Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Wilson, now an international business consultant, was posted to Iraq in 1988 as the No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Then suddenly, he found himself running things after Saddam invaded neighboring Kuwait just after his boss had left Iraq for a vacation. He risked his life sheltering hundreds of Americans fearful of Saddam's wrath, and helped arrange escape flights for American women and children stranded in Kuwait. At one briefing in Iraq for Western journalists, Wilson arrived wearing a noose around his neck instead of a tie -- a defiant swipe at Saddam, who had threatened death for anyone who harbored foreigners. Gayle Smith, who replaced Wilson at the National Security Council, said she has seen Wilson since his wife's name was made public and that he seemed to be doing fine. "You don't serve as acting ambassador in Iraq at the period that he did and become ruffled by something like this," she said. "I do think that he is angry and justifiably so." After serving in Iraq and surviving one of the biggest international crises in years, Wilson was named ambassador to Gabon by former President Bush. In 1997, Clinton put Wilson in charge of African affairs at the NSC, where he helped plan Clinton's first trip to Africa.