Wilson�s House of Lies        
By DiscoverTheNetworks.org
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 8, 2005


�The trip I went on was based upon a transcription of these documents that were later shown to be forgeries.�

The only problem with Wilson�s supposition is that the forged documents would not be in the hands of the intelligence community until seven months after he had been sent to Niger, a fact which directly contradicts his public assertions....

Select Committee report provided some answers. Not surprisingly, their findings indicated that Wilson had flat-out lied to reporters and interviewers, as his wife was shown to have played an instrumental role in procuring the assignment for her husband.

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With the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney�s Chief of Staff, Lewis �Scooter� Libby, Ambassador Joseph Wilson has been returned to his favorite station in life: the limelight.
Wilson has been a staple on numerous television programs while also finding time for an appearance at the National Press Club, during which he pilloried President Bush for creating �a crisis in governance.� The media have been overjoyed to have their favorite Bush administration foil back on television on a consistent basis. Almost all interviews of Wilson conducted since Libby�s indictment have been characterized by a palpable tenor of praise for, and deference to, Wilson. One example of this was a November 2nd �interview� by Keith Olbermann, whose soft, non-confrontational questions were typified by the following:

�Turning to the campaign against you and your wife that certainly began in 2003, there seems to be, I guess, a broad sense that that campaign ended at some point. And yet you can turn on Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or any other reactionary parrot, and you hear these same talking points about you�.Would you just address those three points?�

And so on. In their rush to express their adoration for Wilson, however, the media have again failed the American public on a matter of the utmost importance. With their help, a politically motivated, pathological liar has been elevated to the status of persecuted American hero, his rhetoric taken at face value no matter how deranged it becomes.

Were the media to expend even a fraction of the investigative energy displayed during its pursuit of Mr. Libby in confirming the stories of Mr. Wilson, they would discover that their idol is hardly worthy of admiration. In reality, Wilson is a man who has repeatedly and blatantly parroted falsehoods -- on television and in print -- in order to further the ideology of the far left. His recollections and opinions have been exposed as gross misrepresentations, yet his reputation among the media and a significant portion of the population remains sterling. This misperception of Wilson is unacceptable, especially coming at a time when an increasing number of Americans have apparently begun to sympathize with the former ambassador�s criticism of American foreign policy � criticism which, in its essence, is unabashedly defeatist.

�Former Hippie, Surf Bum and Ski Bum�

Joseph Wilson was born in 1949 in California, into an upper-middle class lifestyle. His parents, freelance photo-journalists, regularly moved their son across Europe throughout his childhood, writing quaint society pieces for state-side newspapers. Following college at UC-Santa Barbara, Wilson lived the life of full-time surf/ski bum and part-time carpenter. Seeking some direction in life, he joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1976, which led to a 22-year career in public service, including embassy jobs in Niger, South Africa, and the Congo. He achieved some notoriety in 1990, when, as Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad, he met with Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Gulf War.

In 1997, while working for NATO, Wilson met his future wife, Valerie Plame, during a reception for the Turkish ambassador in Washington. On their third or fourth date, during a �heavy make-out session,� Plame revealed to Wilson that she was, in fact, a covert operative for the CIA. The new couple then returned to work in Washington, where Wilson advised on African affairs for the National Security Council (NSC) in the Clinton administration. There, Wilson was criticized by some on the NSC staff for being too deferential to African and European complaints about American policy. At that point, admittedly, Wilson�s own career as a government bureaucrat was on a �down-ward� spiral, leading to his retirement in 1998. It would not be long, however, before Wilson�s relevancy would be rescued with the help of the CIA and the ever-mysterious Ms. Plame.


Into Africa

Wilson�s account of his infamous 2002 mission to Niger reads as if torn from the pages of the spy novels of John LeCarre, replete with exotic locales, hushed discussions between government officials, and intriguing clues. However, the story shares another trait with the novels of LeCarre: it is overwhelmingly fiction, tinged intermittently with snippets of fact.

The saga of Joe Wilson and the CIA begins in late February 2002, when he was sent to Niger by the Agency in order to confirm intelligence reports which suggested that the Iraqi government was actively trying to purchase uranium from Niger�s numerous uranium concerns. Landing in the capital city of Niamey, Wilson first conferred with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, who told him that she had personally �debunked� the Iraqi reports from her air-conditioned perch in the U.S. embassy. Wilson then got down to work:

�I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.�

How Wilson was able to ascertain these facts through simple interviews is unknown. After all, he was essentially asking Nigerien officials to reveal their own involvement in corruption involving uranium shipments to Iraq to an admitted agent of the United States government, while offering them nothing more than tea in return for admissions of their personal perfidy.

Strangely, even though Wilson was carrying out what was, in effect, a confidential mission for the CIA, he was not even required to sign a confidentiality agreement, an odd oversight for an agency usually obsessed with operational security. This preoccupation with security was especially prescient in the context of the Iraq-Niger connection, an area of interest that was protected by the highest levels of official secrecy available within the intelligence community. Perhaps, as has been suggested, some in the Agency hoped Wilson would act exactly how he eventually did: divulging his knowledge in such a biased and outrageous fashion that it would seriously damage the President, a goal that many CIA officials were obviously working towards in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.

An additional mystery surrounding Wilson�s mission was the impetus behind it. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Wilson identified an infamous set of forged documents -- provided to the British and the CIA by a dubious �stringer� -- as the sole basis for his trip:

�The trip I went on was based upon a transcription of these documents that were later shown to be forgeries.�

The only problem with Wilson�s supposition is that the forged documents would not be in the hands of the intelligence community until seven months after he had been sent to Niger, a fact which directly contradicts his public assertions. When interviewed on the matter by staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2004, Wilson admitted to being the source of a front-page June 12, 2003 Washington Post story, written by Walter Pincus, in which Wilson -- referred to as a �retired American diplomat� -- stated that he knew the documents were false because �the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.� Senate investigators then reminded Wilson that it was simply impossible for him to have seen the documents, considering he had never been allowed access to them. Wilson later admitted he may have �misspoken,� but continues (as of this writing in early November 2005) to repeat the allegation in the press.

Since Wilson�s charge that he had in fact seen the documents directly contradicted the sworn statement of several CIA officers, Senate investigators saw fit to dig deeper into his claims. Even after additional questioning, CIA officers in the Directorate of Operations (DO) were adamant: they had not provided Wilson with any of the documents he claimed to have read and dismissed as irregular. Asked again about the documents, Wilson could only suggest that Agency �sources� -- which he was unable to identify -- had given him his information.

One would expect that, given his purported findings -- or lack thereof -- Wilson would have left the CIA officials who he briefed upon his return with the impression that the Niger-Iraq story was categorically false. However, Wilson�s brief -- which he never saw fit to write down -- actually confirmed the Niger-Iraq connection in the eyes of the CIA officers who heard it. As Senate investigators would later report, the CIA deemed Wilson�s information meaningless, except for the confirmation that he provided that Iraqi officials had indeed visited Niger in 1999, and that a former Nigerien Prime Minister had told Wilson that he felt the Iraqis were interested in buying uranium. None of these pertinent facts were included in Wilson�s eventual public statements concerning his trip, a rather telling omission.

Ms. Plame
Robert Novak�s July 2003 identification of Ms. Plame as an employee of the CIA immediately raised the question: had she played a role in procuring the assignment for her husband? Wilson and his allies were effusive in refuting the very idea that Plame had anything to do with sending him to Africa. In his book, he writes �Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,� while deeming speculation on the subject as �bullsh*t.� Spokesmen at the CIA concurred, responding to press inquiries by stating, �she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.� Still, the mystery lingered, especially since even a cursory reading of Wilson�s resume reveals that he possesses no background whatsoever in weapons of mass destruction. Why then did the Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) of the CIA�s Directorate of Operations see fit to send him to Niger in the first place?

Finally, a full year after the controversy first erupted, the Senate Select Committee report provided some answers. Not surprisingly, their findings indicated that Wilson had flat-out lied to reporters and interviewers, as his wife was shown to have played an instrumental role in procuring the assignment for her husband. According to the committee report, Plame initiated the process by authoring a memo addressed to the Deputy Director of the CPD on February 12, 2002, in which she alluded to her husband�s �good relations� with government officials. In order to further stoke the CIA�s interest in utilizing her husband, Plame then facilitated a meeting between Wilson and a senior CIA officer.

Plame�s integral involvement in Wilson�s selection evidently troubled some in the CPD, who doubted that his trip would be in any way beneficial, with one officer noting �it appears that the results from this source will be suspect at best, and not believable under most scenarios.� Others voiced concern over the fact that nepotism had played such a clear role in selecting Wilson for the assignment, disappointment expressed in the Senate report, which stated, �it was unfortunate, considering the significant resources available to the CIA,� that Wilson �was the only option available.�



Ms. Plame�s role in the Niger investigation is further called into question by comments she allegedly made to her husband when first approaching him with the assignment. She told Wilson in early February that there was a �crazy report� that connected Iraq to the Niger�s uranium mine. This sort of prefacing of intelligence by a high-ranking analyst, similar to the disbelief voiced by U.S. Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick, represents direct violation of the basic analytical skill-set, which is designed to overcome personal biases. Obviously, from the very beginning, Ms. Plame was personally and adamantly against the idea that the story itself was valid. What better way to engineer the vindication of her opinion than having her husband sent to investigate the matter?



The War Against the White House



With all of the details concerning his trip still classified and the definitive objections of the Butler Report and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence months in the future, a gap in public knowledge formed that allowed the story of the Niger investigation to be defined solely from Wilson�s standpoint. As the United States began to accelerate its plans for war, Wilson used this vacuum to begin his own conflict with the White House, using a pliant press as his weapon. Perhaps no more pliant journalist existed than liberal New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof, who was happy to use Wilson�s leaks as the basis for his May 6, 2003 column, which quoted an unnamed source as telling him �In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.� Wilson later justified the leak by claiming he had been stirred by the 16-word reference to the Niger intelligence that had been included in President Bush�s State of the Union Address, compelling him to fulfill his �civic duty� by passing the information to Kristof.



Wilson�s subversion campaign continued in the pages of The New Republic, which on June 19 published a piece quoting �a former ambassador� -- Wilson -- as suggesting that the Bush administration �knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie.� As would be borne out in later investigations, Wilson�s comments to Kristof and The New Republic were blatant falsehood. However, by this point, for whatever reason, Wilson had decided to use his small amount of knowledge regarding the Niger-uranium case to slander the White House, a campaign that apparently stirred Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to action in an attempt to discern who exactly was spreading disinformation in the media.



Perhaps unhappy with his inability to harm the administration through leaked invective, Wilson finally put a name to his allegations, writing a solemn op-ed for the New York Times on July 7, 2003. Entitled �What I Didn�t Find in Africa,� Wilson in this piece made it clear that, after an exhaustive search, he had found no evidence of Iraqi attempts to procure uranium in Niger, stating additionally, �I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.� Notably, Wilson has always refused to explain how -- given his minute role in determining the extent of the Iraqi threat -- he could justify such far-reaching statements on issues with which he was never involved.



Wilson�s campaign against the Bush administration hit the ideological stratosphere once the identity of his wife was revealed in Novak�s column. The former ambassador quickly put himself in the role of the victim, seizing the opportunity to denounce the administration�s �attacks� on him and his wife, while observing a massive and broad conspiracy behind the revelation of her identity. At the head of this plot, charged Wilson, was Karl Rove, who he hoped to see �frog-marched� out of the White House in chains.



Having become a celebrity in the world of Bush hatred, Wilson then interjected himself into the 2004 Presidential campaign. He was embraced by the foreign policy team of Senator John Kerry, which invited Wilson to sit on its advisory committee. Wilson also joined the senator from Massachusetts on the campaign trail, gracing audiences with statements such as �I don't care who you vote for, but get out there and caucus. Don't leave it to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians.� Had Kerry indeed defeated President Bush, it is more than likely that Wilson would have had a role in shaping American foreign policy. It would have been quite a promotion for Joseph Wilson, who only two years before had been a retired and forgotten diplomat.



Wilson�s fall from credibility was no less rapid than his ascent to political stardom. In July 2004, the British government released a report on the accuracy of pre-war intelligence. Chaired by Lord Butler, a widely respected former government minister, the committee�s report was largely critical of British and American intelligence concerning Iraq�s supposed WMD arsenals. On the Niger episode, however, the Butler committee stated categorically:



�The British government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit [a reference to the 1999 visit of Iraqi officials that even Wilson had reported] was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger's exports, the intelligence was credible.�



This fact came as a mortal blow to Wilson�s false narrative of an administration which relied solely on the �forged documents� to authorize a CIA investigation into Niger�s uranium mines. In fact, the Butler report stated that British intelligence had been interested in the Niger uranium trade years before the documents were even available. The report also confirmed that the CIA, by 2002, had come to believe the British claim that Saddam Hussein had indeed been interested in procuring uranium from Niger, meaning that the Agency had either judged Wilson�s doubts as inconsequential or incorrect. Ironically, the committee confirmed that Iraq had been attempting to buy such materials as late as 2002, the same time period in which Wilson had busied himself sipping mint tea with corrupt Nigerien kleptocrats.



Concerning the �16 words� controversy which had engulfed the White House to the glee of Mr. Wilson, the Senate committee report -- issued within days of the Butler report -- found that President Bush had been fully justified in including the intelligence in his speech. With regard to Director George Tenet�s apology that such information was featured in such a momentus address, the report deemed it misguided, instead criticizing the CIA for not following up on the initial charge sufficiently. Given the fact that the Agency could only bring itself to send Wilson, hardly a seasoned investigator, the report�s negative appraisal of the Agency�s actions seems particularly well-founded.



Fellow Travelers



Wilson�s nonsensical and abrasive hysteria concerning the actions of the Bush administration instantly won him friends among the militant left, who embraced Wilson as a champion. These relationships might strike some as strange since, according to the jacket of his own book, Wilson is a self-ascribed �centrist.� Judged solely by the company he keeps, however, Wilson is far from the avowed moderate which he insistently claims to be.



As part of his half-hearted effort to justify his credentials as a centrist, Wilson claims in his book to having won an award for truth-telling. He neglected to mention that the honor came from the hard-left journal The Nation, which bestowed upon Wilson the �Award for Truth-Telling� during a gala dinner in October 2003.



Soon after being honored by The Nation, Wilson began to delve into the conspiracy mania that has defined the anti-war left. In October 2003, he added a messianic quality to his rhetoric, suggesting that �neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both.� His heroic task was made more difficult, he admitted, because the American media had been �totally co-opted by the administration,� due to the �aggressive intimidation by the administration and the right wing.�   



As the language of the anti-war movement became more caustic, so too did Wilson�s cant. He took to calling the Bush administration �a radical regime, not a Republican administration,� while also decrying them as �fascists,� and �the most oppressive crowd I have ever seen.� With a nod towards his extremist allies, Wilson even theorized that the Bush administration came to power through underhanded methods, �While I am not an expert in elections, I can see how people might believe the last two elections were stolen.�



His opposition to the Iraq war also became more rancorous, once calling the war �a disaster, clearly carried out under false pretences.� He expressed sympathy with Iraqis forced to live under �occupation,� stating �Iraq is a country that remembers its history, dating back millennia. [The Iraqis] will outlive this occupation.� Concerning America�s role in the region, he lamented that he was �ashamed� to see that his country had turned into �just another imperial power who has unleashed the dogs of war.�



With his new extreme talking points in hand, Wilson soon became a fixture of the leftist media circuit, giving inflammatory interviews to fringe outlets such as AlterNet, whose contributors are known to author and publish such tracts as Anti-Capitalism: A Field Guide to the Global Justice Movement. He is also a favorite at MoveOn.org gatherings, where he has delivered some of his more delusional harangues. In addition, Wilson cooperated with faux documentarian Robert Greenwald in his masterpiece of misinformation �Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War.� Wilson�s flirtation with the anti-war movement soon brought him into contact with a fixture in the world of leftist media manipulation, David Fenton of Fenton Communications, who famously concocted the �Camp Casey� strategy in partnership with Cindy Sheehan during the summer of 2005. In 2004, Fenton created the �Iraq Policy Information Program,� a speaker�s bureau that coordinated leftwing attacks on the Iraq War in the media. Its most celebrated advocate: Joe Wilson.      



Perhaps the most infamous example of Wilson�s fraternity with the far left came in June 2005, when he participated in the infamous Downing Street Memo conference held in a Capitol Hill basement and chaired by vehement Bush critic Congressman John Conyers. Fellow speakers included Cindy Sheehan and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who explained the motivation of the Iraq war through acronym, much to the delight of those gathered �O for Oil, I for Israel, and L for leveraging our land bases.� Wilson, in agreement or inured to such lunacy, remained silent and seated, nonplussed.



�A Living Hell�



In a recent Los Angeles Times article entitled �Our 27 Months of Hell,� Wilson makes the audacious charge that �senior administration officials used the power of the White House to make our lives a living hell.� These claims of persecution were then reiterated in the October 30th edition of 60 Minutes -- featuring Wilson -- which deemed the former ambassador a patriot who had been relegated to a tortured existence through the shadowy -- if never enumerated -- machinations of the Bush administration. During his interview with Ed Bradley, Wilson went so far as to claim his wife�s life had been threatened, stating �there have been specific threats.�            



Given the torment and threats to which Wilson had now apparently fallen victim, one would expect him and his wife to have returned to the quiet life of private citizens, wary of the attention garnered by their minor celebrity. Wilson himself was fond of suggesting to the media that his wife was devoted to secrecy, telling Tim Russert on Meet the Press that �she would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed.� The media dutifully played along, with the New York Times profiling Ms. Plame as a woman who �has guarded her privacy� and �shunned publicity.�



In actuality, Wilson has assiduously promoted the image of both his spouse and himself, as an integral part of the public relations war he has waged against the White House since going public with his spurious allegations. Once busy assuring the American audience of their dislike of the limelight, the Wilsons quickly reversed their position, cooperating with all sorts of media outlets while indulging in the many benefits society routinely affords A-list celebrities.



The Wilson�s� celebrity existence began with a story that appeared in the January 2004 edition of Vanity Fair, written by Vicky Ward. The article, a predictably sympathetic piece, was made famous by the fact that it featured a photograph of the theretofore invisible Ms. Plame, albeit wrapped in fashionable headdress. The impeccably staged photo shoot -- taken just days after Wilson had told Mr. Russert that his wife would not allow herself to be photographed -- offered the public its first glimpse of the covert agent of whom so much had been said. Wilson, trying to avoid the fact that the photo was staged, called it �a spur of the moment� event, even though the photo�s caption credited a stylist for �hair, makeup, and grooming.� An ebullient Wilson later told Wolf Blitzer �I think someday, it, too, will be in the International Spy Museum.� Given Wilson�s odd fixation on the fact that the administration had �outed� his wife, it seemed inexplicable that he would further develop her public persona while simultaneously warning of the horrendous damage her loss of cover had wrought.



Months later, Wilson seemed to express some regret about the photo, noting that she had been covered up in Vanity Fair �in the interest of personal security.� However, Wilson�s heartfelt concern for his wife�s safety seemed to wane by June 2005, when the two were photographed -- again in Vanity Fair -- together at a party thrown by the magazine during the Tribeca Film Festival. The scarf, by this time, had come off. The party -- which featured festival organizer Robert DeNiro -- served as a convenient launching point for Wilson�s Hollywood aspirations, as he admitted to often discussing with his wife �who would play her in the movie� that he envisioned being made about his experiences.



Following the publication of his memoir entitled, ironically, The Politics of Truth, Wilson and his wife instantly became the toast of the capitol, appearing at various high-profile functions, their every move reported in the Washington Post, which detailed Ms. Plame�s features and Wilson�s eagerness to introduce her to all comers. While living his life in hell, Wilson nevertheless had time to attend swanky cocktail parties thrown by D.C. society heavyweights such as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and NBC News correspondent Campbell Brown.



Even though the couple was apparently receiving provocative death threats, the Wilsons had no problem cooperating in soft profile pieces for The New York Times, Time Magazine, and The Washington Post which revealed, among other things, the neighborhood where they currently live, the names of their neighbors, and other nearby landmarks. For a couple fearing for their life, they seemed completely nonchalant about their own security, as even casual readers of major newspapers could discern their general location.



Wilson�s �27 months of hell� also proved to be quite profitable, as his autobiography reaped a heady seven-figure sum; he also earned thousands of dollars on the speaking circuit and through media appearances.   



Conclusion



Wilson�s method of discourse has become emblematic of the leftist modus operandi when it comes to opposing the Iraq War: repeat lies frequently and simply enough that they become a regular part of the public discourse. Playing the victim card effectively, Wilson has additionally been able to accrue a certain amount of public sympathy due to his false narrative, including a White House cover-up and smear campaign that -- according to Independent Council Patrick Fitzgerald -- simply never occurred.

In this endeavor, Wilson has been aided by a cooperative media which continues to sing his praises even as his story collapses under the weight of even cursory analysis.

The mainstream media has simply forfeited its objectivity and ignored the contradictions inherent in Wilson�s story, instead relying on the hopelessly compromised but nevertheless provocative tale woven by the former ambassador. Their devotion to him stems not only from their shared animus towards the Bush administration, but also from their refusal to admit that their faith in Wilson -- so eloquently expressed in the high-profile articles of Nicholas Kristof and Walter Pincus -- was completely misplaced.

Due to the media�s inability to admit to their own inaccuracies, it is doubtful they will ever seriously question the myriad fallacies regularly espoused by Wilson. Thus, the former ambassador-turned-disgraced critic of the Bush administration will undoubtedly continue to parrot his lies, secure in the knowledge that his niche of irrational Bush-haters will celebrate the story of him and his wife, regardless of its dubious validity.