I find it interesting that he inserts into his rant, apropos of nothing, that he went to Niger on behalf of the government and NOT the CIA. The only reason to my mind he would say something so out of place is that he suspects he could be in trouble for publicly discussing CIA intelligence gathering and is laying the groundwork for an argument that his mission was really on behalf of State or some other department and therefore not subject to the same secrecy obligations.
.... and yet we have seen some detailed accounts elsewhere (including from Joe "Blowhard" Wilson himself) about how he met with half a dozen CIA people to receive his assignment. Wilson described it later in the summer of 2003 when he was trying to refute allegations that his wife had any role in getting him the mission (she did) and he described how he didn't know any of the CIA people in the room, blah blah blah (of course, that said nothing to the question of what Valerie had done to cause him to be invited to that room at Langley in the first place).
Anyway, when you read all of his accounts and references to his mission across the many months there are many variations and inconsistencies. He definitely does not have a stable and rigorous mind, which is probably why even the other liberals at State tired of him and stalled his career in the mid-90s. I know I could not put up with his bloviating for very long.....
Interesting line of thought. That is one of the curious discrepancies in Wilson's account of events. What he's said on that has not been self-consistent or consistent with other sources. It makes you wonder what the explanation for the inconsistency is.