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Joseph Wilson EPIC Lecture 6/14/2003 Outline/Transcript
EPIC: Education for Peace in Iraq Center ^ | 6/14/2003 | Joseph Wilson as transcribed by Fedora

http://tinyurl.com/ae8w9

Ghosts of Manila........... good book.

Joe Wilson's speech

A month before Robert Novak wrote his column supposedly outing Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson gave a speech in which he talks in the third person about a person who is obviously himself, allows Valerie Plame to be identified as his wife, and discloses his intense opposition to the war in Iraq, as well as his anti-Israel sentiments. He makes clear that he is the source of the Kristoff/Pincus leaks about his mission. He even says that “this thing has legs,” that it will take two or three months, but it has legs – implying, perhaps, that he had already been working with the Kerry campaign to make this issue big – attacking the President’s credibility on the war.

Clifford May noted this Wilson speech in July 2003, but only to show that Wilson wasn’t credible because of the kind of groups to which he was speaking and how easy it was to find out from non-Administration people who his wife was and where she worked because he, in fact, had done so. He did not go into the substance of the speech or the important fact that his wife was already listed there on the website bio.

The speech was given at EPIC, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a left wing organization, which has, a least for the moment, an audio file of the speech on its website A poster at the Free Republic website named “Fedora” transcribed parts of the speech.

Here are some highlights:

“Let me just start out by saying, as a preface to what I really want to talk about, to those of you who are going out and lobbying tomorrow, I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government-not of the CIA but of the government-and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren’t using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the President’s State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the President is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa. That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there’s four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs. And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair’s government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States, so I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did.”

“I remain of the view that we will find chemical and biological weapons, and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam’s regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons—not surprising if you live in a part of the world where you do have a nuclear-armed country, an enemy of yours, which is just a country away from you….”

[snip]

“But I do know. . .that in order to have a liberation strategy, you have to have people who are willing to fight for their own liberation. Otherwise you will never get that liberation bounce that Ken Adelman promised us—that Richard Perle promised us, when he said that Iraqis would be cheering us from the rooftops at our marching in there.”

[snip]

“Evidence of that can be found in the Habbaniya gold market today. The price of gold jewelry in Habbaniya is cheaper than it is anywhere else in the world. And that is because the middle class has had to liquidate all their assets. In Iraq, like in many other parts of the world, people keep their assets, their wealth, in gold….”

[snip]

“The real agenda in all this, of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum which was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90s, which was called ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm’. And what it is, cut to the quick, is if you take out some of these countries, or some of these governments, that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people. . .But that is the real agenda. You can put weapons of mass destruction out there, you can put terrorism out there, you can put liberation out there. Weapons of mass destruction got hard-headed realists on board, through a bunch of lies. . .”

And this is from the website about the program:

He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has four children.

Clarice Feldman 10 10 05

Thanks for that..

I think what they are looking for is the actual MP3 file..from which the transcript was made..

A Long Overdue Frog-March

By Ray McGovern, October 21, 2005.

snip

Do you know the ambassador?

When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14 conference, I wasted no time asking him -- rather naively, it turned out -- if he knew who the former U.S. ambassador who went to Niger was. He smiled and said, "You're looking at him." I asked when he intended to go public; in a couple of weeks, was the answer.

Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis, told me the White House had already launched a full-court press in an effort to dredge up dirt on him. He added, "When I do speak out, they are going to go after me big time. I don't know the precise nature the retaliation will take, but I can tell you now it will be swift and vindictive. They cannot afford to have people thinking they can escape unscathed if they spill the beans on the dishonesty undergirding this war." (Sad to say, the White House approach has worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my former C.I.A. colleagues who know about the lies; none -- not one -- has been able to summon the courage to go public.)

Wilson's tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson's New York Times op-ed of July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," pulled no punches. Worse still from the administration's point of view, Wilson then dropped the other shoe during an interview with the Washington Post also on July 6.

Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of "lies." So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to "justify" an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding "what else they are lying about."

It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly -- if clumsily (and apparently illegally) -- to retaliate.

It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for "Scooter") Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife. And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than never, I suppose.

snip

Ray McGovern was a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

http://tinyurl.com/7qdtu

Bump!

Thanks for the responses. The American Spectator is indeed trying to find the audio of the Wilson speech.

I just pinged Fedora. They may still have a copy of it.

SSHHH, don't tell Fitz-hack. He does NOT want the truth.

This is what happens when people hate Israel more than they love their own country.

I find McGovern's synchophantic drivel offensive.

The EPIC stuff does not indicate that Plame worked for the CIA. It only says that Wilson's wife is the former Valerie Plame. It's the disclosure of her employment status with the CIA that was supposedly disclosed first by Novak. Now, General Valelly says Wilson mentioned it in a green room in 2002, but I don't see it in this EPIC stuff.

Regards,

I sure would like to hear that part about Israel.

fedora transcribed the EPIC speech and posted it here at FR..

This is what fedora found re his comments on Israel--He has said this elsewhere BTW As have his cohorts McGovern and Johnson (See Milbanks' Conyer's Playhouse Hearings in the Wash Post)

19:46: "The real agenda in all this, of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum which was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90s, which was called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm'. And what it is, cut to the quick, is if you take out some of these countries, or some of these governments, that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people. . .But that is the real agenda. You can put weapons of mass destruction out there, you can put terrorism out there, you can put liberation out there. Weapons of mass destruction got hard-headed realists on board, through a bunch of lies. . ."

Thanks. I and a number of other FReepers do have copies of the mp3--I naturally made sure of that before I posted that thread. However the part mentioning Plame is not in the mp3 audio, it's in the printed text of Wilson's biography that accompanies the audio, which can be retrieved from the site or caches, and is copied to the thread where I posted that. Also as Buckhead says, it only mentions Plame's name, it does not mention her CIA association directly. It does illustrate that anyone investigating Wilson after he drew attention to his own work for the CIA in Niger could've retrieved Plame's name from public sources, as indeed Novak did by consulting Who's Who.

How does this speech out his wife?