Bump.
Babelfish translation, touched up by me, difficult to translate (for me) French newspaperese, though.
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http://www.izaronews.org/noticias/%2828_09_03%29/extranjera2.htm "Liberation," October 1, 2003, Paris (released)
"Bush in the Throes of the Wilson Affair (l’affaire Wilson)"
The White House would have balanced (swung? exposed?) a CIA spy
To see him like that, Joe Wilson, consultant and former ambassador, does not have the appearance of nothing. He is a direct and straightforward guy, democratic (maybe “Democrat”), (a) francophile, (and a) specialist in Africa and Iraq, consulting with the Rock Creek Corporation
firm. When it rains, he bears a beret. By him alone, this man became Bush’s nightmare. In July, he burst open the scandal about the alleged Nigerien uranium deliveries to Iraq, exposing to daylight a presidential lie. The affair, which marked the beginning of Bush’s slip in the polls,
rebounds (gets going again) today. At the time of the controversy in July, two sources in the Bush administration revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, analyst for a private firm, was actually a CIA agent. This leak constitutes a Federal crime, liable for prison in which the Department of Justice is investigating. The affair, has done for two days the one of the newspapers. Democratic
senators want the appointment of an independent investigator.
Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, described as "ridiculous" the suspicion Wilson expressed publicly in August, according to whom the political adviser of Bush, Karl Rove, was the origin of the leak. The President, he indicated, asked his team to cooperate fully with the investigation...
Good profile. In February 2002 the CIA decided to send Wilson to Niger, to check information that Iraq acquired uranium from this country. Wilson had a good profile for such a mission (non-secret -or non secret police-). In the Seventies, he was a diplomat in Niger. In 1990, he was the last American diplomat stationed at Baghdad, as the chargé d'affaires. After having gone to Niamey, Wilson explained to
the CIA that this alleged Niger prodcedure did not hold the road (pass muster).
Despite everything, at the end of January, president Bush affirmed that "British intelligence learned that
Saddam Hussein had recently sought to obtain significant quantities of African uranium". July 6, Joe Wilson takes the pen in the New York Times to criticize the administration, evoking his mission. The article starts a beautiful controversy. One week later, in his chronicle published in several newspapers, the conservative editorialist Robert Novak reports that it is Wilson’s wife
who suggested sending her husband to Niger: Valery Plame, he lets slip out, is a CIA agent specializing in weapons of mass destruction, by quoting "two sources". Joseph Wilson always refused to comment on his wife’s work. "I would not say to you if she is, or not, an agent. But this leak is harmful in both cases ", he declared recently in Libération," If she is indeed an agent, the administration exposes her, as her network. If she is not, she must spend her time contradicting... " According to him, "the goal of the leak was dissuasive: to frighten others who wanted to talk, them also, (about) what they know ".
New revelations. Can the affair turn in the "Wilsongate"? For lack of independent investigator, it is not very probable. But new revelations are not excluded. According to Washington Post in July, "two high persons in charge for the White House had called six journalists in Washington to
reveal the identity and the occupation of Wilson’s wife". What does many people to know the source of the leak.