Ex-Ambassador Wilson to Name Names

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson will reveal the name of the person he thinks leaked his wife's identity as an undercover CIA (news - web sites) officer in a book due out in May, his publisher said Tuesday.

A federal grand jury has heard testimony from at least four White House officials in its investigation to identify the leaker of Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who published the name in his syndicated column last July. Numerous other officials have been interviewed by the FBI (news - web sites).

Spokeswoman Karen Auerbach of the Avalon Publishing Group in New York said she did not know the identity of the purported leaker.

Novak said in his July 14 column that his sources were two unidentified senior administration officials. Novak has not commented about the matter during the grand jury investigation.

Publication of the book and Wilson's accompanying promotional tour could have political overtones because he is now a foreign policy adviser to Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry (news - web sites). Democrats are seeking to raise questions of credibility in the minds of voters about the reasons President Bush (news - web sites) went to war.

Wilson did not return telephone calls seeking comment for this story. He has previously contended that White House political adviser Karl Rove condoned the leak but was not the actual leaker.

After Novak's column appeared, Wilson said other reporters told him that Rove had characterized Plame as "fair game" because of Wilson's criticism of the White House's uses of intelligence before the Iraq (news - web sites) war.

Wilson was enlisted by the CIA to investigate whether Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he found no evidence of such an attempt and has accused the Bush administration of exaggerating Iraq's nuclear capabilities to build support for war.

A description of the book on the publishing company's Web site says Wilson's conclusions about the Niger uranium were "brushed aside" by the administration.

The grand jury has continued to meet regularly in Washington under the direction of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, who was appointed by Deputy Attorney General James Comey to oversee the probe. Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) disqualified himself from the case in December in the face of Democratic criticism of his close political ties to the White House.

The leaker could be charged with a felony that carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

This seems to me to be part of an orchestrated attack to discredit the Bush administration and to elevate Dems with foreign policy/terrorism experience to the national stage. The National Security Council seems to be the swamp these creatures crawl from. Look at how this neatly rolls out.

Wilson leaks the story to Kristof at the NY Times (5-6-03) who focuses on the Cheney connection. Next Wilson leaks it to Pincus at the Washington Post (6-12-03). Then Wilson himself, having set the table, appears as himself in an Op Ed in the NY Times (7-6-03). A week later Novak writes his column (7-14-03), names Plame and identifies her as an agency operative on WMD. And a week after that comes Phelps and Royce in Newsday (7-22-03) taking any mystery out of Novak's reference by identifying Plame as an undercover officer. In this article the authors said that the White House Press Secretary referred questions to the National Security Council.

It's funny to me that both Clarke and Wilson held their last positions at the NSC (which is where Wilson retired from in 1998, he was in charge of African Affairs). It's also funny to me that Wilson was in Baghdad (as a senior American diplomat) during the time another story fell into the lap of Royce (the Newsday journalist). Royce, citing a US diplomat, said the Saddam had wanted a diplomatic solution to avoid the first Gulf War and that the first Bush administration ignored his efforts.

Connecting the dots makes this all look orchestrated. I don't think Wilson and Clarke are the conductors, they both profile perfectly though as men who would be easily lured by the financial gains and media attention if so tempted.

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