That Joseph Wilson's deck contained fewer than 52 cards was evident a long time ago. Last year, just before publication of the New York Times op-ed that ushered in his 15 minutes of celebrity, he delivered a strident tirade to a gathering sponsored by the far left Education for Peace in Iraq Center. Little Green Footballs linked to an MP3 recording of his speech. It has since vanished from the Web [Update: LGF found it again here], but I listened to it and can confirm that it was an unbalanced production, attributing the decision to invade Iraq to Israeli agents and predicting that within a year (i. e., by about right now) Iraqis would be killing at least 20 Americans a day. The tone was worse than the content. Its combination of egotism, hysteria and incoherence sounded much like a drunken barroom monologue.
The former Ambassador's state of mind was further revealed during the kerfuffle over Bob Novak's disclosure that his wife works for the C.I.A. On October 5, 2003, the Washington Post [sorry, no link readily available] quoted him as asserting that "a leading former CIA official had said his wife 'was probably the single highest target of any possible terrorist organization or hostile intelligence service that might want to do damage'." To quote what I said at the time:
That statement is almost certainly a lie. If Mrs. Plame-Wilson were that important, the CIA would not have confirmed to Bob Novak that she works for it, her CIA employment would not come up in casual conversations around Washington (Clifford D. May, "Spy Games" ), and no "leading former CIA official" would reveal what she did. The work of high-level operatives is secret from all outsiders, including their families; if Valerie wasn't supposed to tell Joe, it is inconceivable that a third party took it upon himself to do so.
Lie though it is, the claim is a dangerous lie. Until today, no anti-American fanatic had any reason to think that Mrs. Plame-Wilson was anything higher than what Bob Novak said she was: a mid-level analyst in an agency swarming with such people. Now there is a risk that somebody will take her husband at his word and imagine that the Great Satan can be seriously wounded by timely assassination of this "single highest target".
Under these circumstances, Valerie Plame-Wilson certainly should receive governmental protection — and the man who has possibly endangered her life should receive governmental, beginning with psychiatric, attention of a different sort.
Hence, it shouldn't be a big surprise that today's Washington Post outs Wilson as a serial liar. He claimed in the Times that his investigation discredited reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to purchase uranium from Niger, but here, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's new report on pre-war Iraqi intelligence, is what he actually found:
Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998. [Ed. note: It isn't clear whether the minister said "Iraq" or "Iran". If the reference was to Iran, it is no evidence of Saddam's intentions, though it does undermine Wilson's assertion in his Times piece that security at the Niger uranium mines was so tight that illicit deals were impracticable.]
Were Wilson an honest man, he would have criticized the State Department for its reluctance to accept his evidence, rather than President Bush for making use of it.
Wilson is also guilty of other falsehoods:
The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him. . . .
The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
In some Clintonian sense, it wasn't a "recommendation", I suppose. Nor should we overlook the possibility that Valerie lied to Joe. A wife might well be cautious in speaking to a husband who, it appears, would expose her to a risk of death in order to further his vendetta against the incumbent President.
Finally:
The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.
There's no word yet on whether the Kerry-Edwards campaign will continue using Wilson's services as a foreign policy advisor.
Further reading: JustOneMinute, "Happy Anniversary to Joseph C. Wilson IV"
Pejmanesque, "Desperately Seeking Joe Wilson's Credibility"
Belgravia Dispatch, "The TPM Defense: 'Splaining' or Spinning?"
Power Line, "Joseph Wilson, Liar"
Roger L. Simon, "Vanity Fair"
Jeff Jacoby, "New Look at Bush's '16 Words'"
Clifford D. May, "Our Man in Niger"
JustOneMinute, "Joe Says It Ain't So"
Matthew Continetti, "'A Little Literary Flair'" (a comprehensive summary)
Mark Steyn, "How a Serial Liar Suckered Dems and the Media":
This isn't a case of another Michael Moore, court buffoon to the Senate Democrats, or Whoopi Goldberg, has-been potty-mouth to John Kerry. They're in show biz; what do they know?
But Wilson does know; he went there, he talked to officials, and he lied about America's national security in order to be the anti-Bush crowd's Playmate of the Month. Either he's profoundly wicked or he's as deranged as that woman on the Paris Metro last week who falsely claimed to have been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack. The Paris crazy was unmasked within a few days, but the Niger crazy was lionized for a full year.
Some of us are on record as dismissing Wilson in the first bloom of his unmerited celebrity. But John Kerry was taken in — to the point where he signed him up as an adviser and underwrote his Web site. What does that reveal about Mister Nuance and his superb judgment? He claims to be able to rebuild America's relationships with France, and to have excellent buddy-to-buddy relations with French political leaders. Yet anyone who's spent 10 minutes in Europe this last year knows that virtually every government there believes Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa. Is Kerry so uncurious about America's national security he can't pick up the phone to his Paris pals and get the scoop firsthand? For all his claims to be Monsieur Sophisticate, there's something hicky and parochial in his embrace of an obvious nutcake for passing partisan advantage.
Any Democrats and media types who are in the early stages of yellowcake fever and can still think clearly enough not to want dirty nukes going off in Seattle or Houston — or even Vancouver or Rotterdam or Amman — need to consider seriously the wild ride Yellowcake Joe took them on. An ambassador, in Sir Henry Wootton's famous dictum, is a good man sent abroad to lie for his country. This ambassador came home to lie to his. And the Dems and the media helped him do it.
Comments