Saturday, November 5, 2005
THE PLAME GAME
Analyst says
Wilson
'outed' wife in 2002
Disclosed in
casual conversations
a year before Novak column
Posted: November 5, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Art
Moore
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Valerie Plame appeared in
Vanity Fair magazine with her husband Joseph Wilson in January
2004 |
A retired Army general says the man
at the center of the CIA leak controversy, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson,
revealed wife Valerie Plame's identity in a casual conversation more than
a year before she allegedly was "outed" by the White House through a
columnist.
Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame's
status as a CIA operative in at least three, possibly five, separate
conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in
Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.
Vallely and Wilson both were contracted by Fox News to discuss the war
on terror as the U.S. faced off with Iraq in the run-up to the spring 2003
invasion.
Vallely says, according to his recollection, the first time Wilson
mentioned his wife's job was around February or March of 2002 ? more than
a year before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column, citing senior
administration officials, identified her as "an Agency operative on
weapons of mass destruction."
Ret. Maj. Gen. Paul
Vallely |
"He was rather open about his wife working at the CIA," said Vallely,
who retired in 1991 as the Army's deputy commanding general in the
Pacific.
WND learned of Vallely's claim through his interview Thursday night on
the ABC radio network's John
Batchelor show.
Vallely told WND that, in his opinion, it became clear over the course
of several conversations that Wilson had his own agenda, as the
ambassador's analysis of the war and its surrounding politics strayed from
reality.
"He was a total self promoter," Vallely said. "I don't know it if was
out of insecurity, to make him feel important, but he's created so much
turmoil, he needs to be investigated and put under oath."
The only indictment in Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's two-year
investigation came one week ago when Vice
President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was
charged with one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making
false statements and two counts of perjury in the case. He could face
up to 30 years in prison and $1.25 million in fines if convicted on all
five counts.
Vallely said, citing CIA colleagues, that in addition to his
conversations with Wilson, the ambassador was proud to introduce Plame at
cocktail parties and other social events around Washington as his CIA
wife.
"That was pretty common knowledge," he said. "She's been out there on
the Washington scene many years."
If Plame were a covert agent at the time, Vallely said, "he would not
have paraded her around as he did."
"This whole thing has become the biggest non-story I know," he
concluded, "and all created by Joe Wilson."
Fitzgerald has been investigating whether Plame's identity was leaked
by the White House as retaliation against Wilson for his assertion that
the Bush administration made false claims about Iraq's attempt to buy
nuclear material in Africa.
Wilson traveled to Niger in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored trip to
check out the allegations about Iraq and wrote up his findings in a July
6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece titled "What I Didn't Find in
Africa."
White House defenders insist the aides simply were setting the record
straight about Wilson, seeking to put his credibility in context by
pointing out it was Plame who helped him get the CIA consulting job.
Wilson denied his wife's role initially, but a bipartisan report by the
Senate panel documented it.
Wilson declared in the column that his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger
connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial "16 words" in
President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of
uranium from Africa."
Libby's charges pertained only to the investigation itself, not the
1982 act that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover.
The Washington attorney who spearheaded the drafting of that law, told
WND earlier this year that Plame's circumstances don't meet the statute's
criteria.
Victoria Toensing ? who worked on the legislation in her role as chief
counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ?
said Plame most likely was not a covert agent when White House aides
mentioned her to reporters.
The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United
States within the previous five years. But Plame gave up her role as a
covert agent nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York
Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Kristof said the CIA brought Plame back to Washington in 1994 because
the agency suspected her undercover security had been compromised by
turncoat spy Aldrich Ames.
Moreover, asserted Toensing, for the law to be violated, White House
aides would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the
knowledge that they were disclosing a covert agent.
Previous stories:
Cheney
top aide indicted, resigns
Sealed
indictments coming this week
Drafter
of intel statute: Rove accusers ignorant
Art Moore is a news editor with
WorldNetDaily.com.
