http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/14/wbr.01.html
BLITZER: We're joined here in Washington by Ambassador Joe Wilson.
Mr. Ambassador, welcome back to CNN.
JOE WILSON, FORMER AMBASSADOR: Nice to be with you, Wolf.
BLITZER: You saw this RNC, Republican National Committee, briefing paper that has been released today: Joe Wilson's top worst inaccuracies and misstatements. Basically, they accuse you of lying on a bunch of various issues related to this case. We're going to go through some of them.
But what do you make of the effort to smear you right now?
WILSON: Well, it strikes me that it's typical of a Rove-type operation. "Slime and defend" is what it's been called in the past.
But the fact of the matter is, of course, that this is not a Joe Wilson or Valerie Wilson issue. This is an issue of whether or not somebody leaked classified information to the press, who then published it, thereby putting covert operations and a covert officer at some risk.
BLITZER: All right. Let's go through some of the charges that have been made against you. For example, on Tuesday I interviewed Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican Party, and he said that -- let me reed to you specifically what he said:
"I think, according to what we learned this past weekend, I think what Karl Rove said turned out to be right. Joe Wilson's story was not accurate. It was based on a false premise and he tried to discourage the writing of an inaccurate story based on the false premise," that false premise being that Vice President Dick Cheney asked you to go to Niger to investigate these charges of enriched uranium shipments going to Iraq.
WILSON: Well, of course, if you look back at the original article I wrote, I said it was the Vice President's Office who expressed an interest in following up on this particular matter.
The vice president himself later said that he himself had asked about it. I've never said it was the vice president who sent me. It's clear in the article and, indeed, it's clear in an interview that you did with me last year. And if you run the tape on that, you'll see that what the statement that they used was chopped out of the...
BLITZER: But, basically, you still hold to the notion that the whole idea of sending someone to Niger originated in the Vice President's Office?
WILSON: No, no, no, no, no. The idea of sending someone to Niger originated in response to a request from the Office of the Vice President. That's how I was briefed. That required an answer.
The decision was made by the operations people at the CIA, after a meeting that I had with the analytical community, to ask me if I would go and help answer some of the questions that still remained so that we would better understand the situation.
And let me also say that raising the question was perfectly legitimate. Indeed, it was an important question to raise. The vice president would have been derelict in not raising it.
Had, in fact, there been evidence of uranium sales from Niger to Iraq, it would have demonstrated conclusively that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. The fact that there wasn't evidence to that effect should have reassured the U.S. government that, at least on this side, there was no evidence.
BLITZER: All right. So at least you agree -- and I know you have in the past as well -- that the vice president never directly asked you to go or asked that anyone go, namely his staff just wanted some answers and it was the CIA's decision to then send -- dispatch -- someone to try to get some firsthand information?
WILSON: That's correct. And I've said that in my op-ed, and I've said it in an interview here, and I've said it every time since.
BLITZER: Now, the Senate Intelligence Committee report, as you well know, suggested this and I'll read to you what they say: "Interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip" -- Counterproliferation Division over at the CIA.
And you've denied that your wife was the one who came up with the idea to send you
WILSON: It's not so much that I've denied it. It was the CIA itself that denied it a week after the Novak article came out, well before I was ever in a position to acknowledge that my wife worked for the CIA.
And indeed, regrettably, the staff at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence did not call the CIA to find out their official position. But a year before, Newsday reporters, Knut Royce and Tim Phelps did, and this is what the CIA told them:
"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked alongside the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.
"They -- the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story -- "were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising. There are people elsewhere in the government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up for some reason. I can't figure out who it would be."
BLITZER: You wrote a separate letter, which we've read, to the chairman, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, making these points.
Did you ever get a response to them? Because their conclusion was very hard and fast, that it was your wife who came up with the idea.
WILSON: One of the things I asked them to do was go out and re- interview an officer who they had quoted as saying that she had dropped my name into the hat or she had suggested me. He went to see her and said that he had not said that and he wished for an opportunity to correct the record. As far as I know, they never did.
But the response to your direct question...
BLITZER: What would have been so bad if your wife would have recommended you to go to Niger for this investigation.
WILSON: Of course, from my perspective, it wouldn't have been bad at all. This was a legitimate request to answer a national security question. I was well qualified to do so. Indeed as the Senate Select Committee report says, I had made a trip in 1999 to Niger to look into other uranium-related matters, so I was well known to the CIA.
BLITZER: I want you to take a breath, because we're going to take a breath ourselves. We're going to take a quick break. We have more questions to ask Ambassador Joe Wilson. He's sticking around. Please stay with us.
Also coming up, the man who played a major role in planning the Iraq War, the undersecretary of defense. Doug Feith, he is standing by as well. He'll be my guest.
And later, closing in on al Qaeda in Iraq. Coalition forces say they've nabbed two key aides to Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
And rescued from the rubble. Firefighters dig brick by brick by brick to save a baby trapped when a wall collapses. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Welcome back.
And we're back with the former U.S. ambassador, Joe Wilson. His wife is the former CIA operative whose name was linked to reporters, possibly illegally.
Let's talk a little bit about the politics of this. On September 30th, 2003, you were quoted in The Washington Post as saying, "at the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
That's almost two years ago you were saying Karl Rove should be arrested. On the basis of what were you saying it then?
WILSON: Well, it was a statement that I'd made at a meeting in Seattle. And as my wife later told me, she thought I'd gone a little over the top, so I took the handcuffs off. But I believed then and I believe now that -- and I know that Karl Rove was, in fact, engaged in pushing the Novak story, including calling a reporter and saying, "Wilson's wife is fair game."
I find that to be an outrageous abuse of power from a senior White House official, certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House. In handcuffs? Probably not. Out of handcuffs? Certainly.
BLITZER: But you don't want to name that reporter who told you that?
WILSON: It was Chris Matthews of "Hardball."
BLITZER: He said that he had spoken with...
WILSON: He called me up as soon as he got off the phone. He called me up and he said, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says your wife is fair game."
BLITZER: Do you believe that Karl Rove committed a crime?
WILSON: I don't know. That's in the hands of the special counsel. Clearly, the CIA, in referring it to the Justice Department, believed that a possible crime needed to be investigated. And that is what set off the investigation and that is where we are now.
Two years later, after the president had said he wanted everybody to cooperate with the Justice Department investigation, we've had to go up to the Supreme Court to get the release of the confidentiality waiver for a journalist. We've got one journalist who has been through agony before he was released and we have another journalist languishing in jail. It is time for those sources to step forward and accept responsibility for what they've said to these journalists.
BLITZER: You know, you're being accused of being a political hack, a Democrat, a supporter of John Kerry, someone who is simply seeking to score political points.
WILSON: Well, let me tell you, I reserve the right to participate fully in the selection of my country's leaders. That's a right that every American has.
Let me make a couple of points.
One, I was a George Herbert Walker Bush ambassador.
Two, I made my trip out to Niger because I was asked to investigate a national security matter.
Three, my trip out to Niger took place eight months before I ever spoke out on the Iraq war.
And four, when I did speak out, in an article in October of 2002, I acknowledged that weapons of mass destruction were the thereat. I offered my views based on my two and a half years in Iraq, including as charge d'affaires in Baghdad during the first gulf war.
And as a consequence of the article I wrote, I received a letter from the first President Bush. Let me just read part of it to you, if I may.
BLITZER: This was a letter you received when?
WILSON: I received this on October 25th, 2002, at the very beginning of the serious debate on what U.S. policy toward Iraq should be, eight months after I made a trip to Niger, and eight months before my wife's identity was compromised.
He says, "Dear Joe: I read your fascinating article, and I agree with a lot of it. I am not sure Saddam Hussein will back down in the face of this latest challenge, but I certainly hope he will. Further, let me conclude by saying thank you very much for your letter. Further, I have great respect for you and for your service to our country. I hope you know that. Warm regards, George Bush."
BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.
What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.
WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.
BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?
WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.
She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in Vanity Fair appeared. And I have every right to have the American public know who I am and not to have myself defined by those who would write the sorts of things that are coming out, being spewed out of the mouths of the RNC...
BLITZER: Who did you vote for in 2000?
WILSON: In 2000? I voted for Al Gore. In 1992, I voted for George Bush.
BLITZER: The first President George...
WILSON: That's correct.
BLITZER: But you gave money to both campaigns.
WILSON: I believe passionately in the right of citizens and the responsibility of citizens to participate in the choice of their political leaders. I believed that...
BLITZER: Valerie, your wife, still has a job at the CIA.
WILSON: She has gone back to it.
But let me go back to this. I also contributed to the Bush- Cheney campaign in 2000, because I believed that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney would make better Republican leaders than Mr. McCain. I regret that decision. I'd like to get my money back. But I voted for Al Gore.
BLITZER: One final question: What's going to happen, in your opinion, when all the dust settles?
WILSON: Well, I believe that the special counsel will have the last word on this. And I have full faith in the institutions of our government and in the personal qualities of Pat Fitzgerald and of the FBI team that is working to support him.
BLITZER: So if -- and this is the final question -- if there are no charges leveled against Karl Rove, will you apologize to him?
WILSON: I believe Karl Rove should be fired. I believe Karl Rove should be fired because I believe it's an outrageous abuse of power for somebody sitting in an office next to the president of the United States to be personally engaged in a smear campaign against citizens of this country.
BLITZER: And his argument that he was simply trying to correct the record, that Matt Cooper was going down the wrong trail when -- Matt Cooper of Time magazine -- when he was suggesting that Vice President Cheney recommended that you go on the trip...
WILSON: If you go back and you take a look at what he was suggesting, he was suggesting that -- he was saying that more information would be forthcoming.
The information that came out of the White House the day after my article appeared, and a week after Rove apparently leaked to Cooper, was that the 16 words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address.
The following week, Stephen Hadley -- coincidentally -- happened to find two faxes and a memo of a telephone conversation, which caused him to offer his resignation, because they had put those 16 words in the State of the Union address.
There's two irrefutable facts. The 16 words in the State of the Union address, and my wife's identity was compromised. And Joe Wilson was not responsible for either of those.
BLITZER: All right. We'll leave it at that.
Joe Wilson, the former ambassador to a couple countries in Africa and the former acting ambassador in Iraq.
Thanks for joining us.
WILSON: Thanks, Wolf, very much.
BLITZER: And when we come back, another hurricane rapidly intensifying right now in the Caribbean. We'll tell you about Emily's latest projected path. Plus, a three-judge panel in Aruba rules whether or not two brothers can be re-arrested in the case of that missing Alabama student.
And one of the key strategists in the war in Iraq, the undersecretary of defense, Doug Feith, he's standing by to join us on the current wave of violence in Iraq. Stay with us.