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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
A Long Overdue Frog-March
By Ray McGovern, October 21, 2005.
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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.
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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
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 sure would like to hear that part about Israel.
fedora transcribed the EPIC speech and posted it here at FR..
IOW wilson planed the outrage and the leak "shock" was a fake from the outset, and it was even a SET UP!
July 18, 2005
CIA Tried to Discredit Secret Memo Through Washington Post
Much of the discussion this week about the latest disclosures in the alleged outing of a covert CIA agent will focus on an internal memo that detailed how former Ambassador Joe Wilson was chosen for a mission to Niger. The document indicated that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, “offered up his name” for the assignment to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein tried to acquire uranium from the African nation.
Officials at the CIA tried to discredit the “smoking gun” memo and the news service that confronted Wilson about it in October 2003 in order to keep the White House on the defensive. They relied on a sympathetic recipient of previous leaks that cast the administration in a negative light for the disinformation effort. In December 2003, the Washington Post quoted an agency source as “challenging the accuracy” of the document, claiming that the meeting described could not have taken place.
JOSEPH WILSON: Sure, a week after the article appeared, and before I had responded, I was not going to respond to Novak's article publicly. I was not going to comment and did not comment on my wife's employment, other than to say, hypothetically, if she was what Novak asserts, then he might be in violation of the law and refer all questions to the C.I.A., which was appropriate. So, I was laying low. But the communications office was calling around all these journalists, and over the course of the weekend, I was getting calls every day from people saying – the first call was ‘The White House is telling us so many off the wall things, we can’t even go with them, but we'd like you to come on so we can ask you some questions.’ I didn't rise to that bait. Andrea Mitchell called me and said, ‘The White House is saying that the real story here is Wilson and his wife.’ And then, finally, Chris Matthews called me and said, ‘I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says,’ and I quote, ‘Wilson's wife is fair game.’
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JOSEPH WILSON: I have not spoken to Pat Fitzgerald for almost a year-and-a-half. I was interviewed by him once early in his tenure. My wife was interviewed by him once early in his tenure in a separate interview from mine, and neither of us have spoken to him since. We have not been before the Grand Jury. We're not part of this case. And, of course, he has appropriately not shared with us any information he might have. So anything that I might know would be just pure speculation. And I'm sure that those of you who are out there sleuthing, as you have been, and you have been doing a terrific job, know far more about what's going on than I do. I get all my information from you. Let me also just say for the record, I have only laid eyes and met Judy Miller once in my life, laid eyes on and met her, and that was in November of 2004 at a birthday party on election night. That's the first and only time I have ever been introduced to her, and that we have ever spoken.
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JOSEPH WILSON: Sure. Well, several days before he wrote his article, Novak was walking down the streets of Washington, D.C., and somebody came up and said hello to him and engaged him in a conversation. Now, that happens to people who are sort of familiar figures who you see on television a lot. I'm sure, Amy, it happens to you. People come up and say, ‘Hey, you're Bob Novak. Can we have’ -- I suppose people don't call you Bob Novak, but people come up and say, hi, you're so and so, and let's – and strike up a conversation. That's what happened. And during the course of the conversation, this stranger raised, or the subject of Niger and the op-ed came up, and Novak said bluntly to him, ‘Wilson is an asshole,’ although I had never met Novak before, ‘and his wife works for the C.I.A.’ Well, it turns out the stranger to Novak was somebody that I knew. And he walked right over to my office. He said, I don't know what you wife does, I have never met your wife, but here is what Novak is saying on the streets. This was several days before his article appeared.
Now, needless to say, I was pretty unhappy that somebody would be walking around the streets blurting this stuff out about my wife to absolute strangers. The security implications are enormous. And I called Novak's nominal boss at CNN, Eason Jordan, and then subsequently called Novak himself, and he did apologize, but, of course, the damage by that time had already been done, and he went ahead and wrote the article anyway, despite the fact that the C.I.A. spokesman told him there was no truth to the article and not to use Valerie's name. Told him twice, in fact.
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JOSEPH WILSON: Yeah, it was the White House Iraq Group. It was known by its acronym, WHIG, the WHIG Group.
MURRAY WAAS: And Libby played a key role in that, and interestingly, the same people who were selling the war to the American people, who were part of that group, were the same people who then were central to trying to discredit Ambassador Wilson and his wife. And because the two were interrelated or interconnected, they mudded information out, which we have now learned so much of it was false and just not true, telling the American people there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities or huge efforts taking place by Saddam to develop those capacities. Those were not true.
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So I wrote that story in the Prospect, but not sure when, maybe a few months ago. The Los Angeles Times just had a front page story by a friend of mine, Tom Hamburger, which was a little bit -- which was even more precise and named Lewis Libby, Scooter Libby, the Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney, and Karl Rove, as the two key players in that.
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Joe Wilson: The fact that Mr. Rove, who is now documented to have been a liar and to have been the source of a treasonous leak is still on the payroll and Mr. Libby is still on the payroll and Mr. Bolton is up at the United Nations really, I think, is a breach of the President's bond to the American people that his -- he was good for his word and that he was honest and he was a straight shooter.
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MURRAY WAAS: That's correct. Our hands are tied. I just wanted to backtrack for a moment and say your competitor, National Public Radio, reported this morning that on his second day at the U.N., and this is an exact quote, John Bolton has been a “model of decorum.” That's their exact words. So it should be interesting if NPR reports on the third, fourth and tenth and twelfth day and how long into his tenure as U.N. ambassador that he has been a model of decorum. It's kind of extraordinary that they said without any kind of irony whatsoever, I think, reported that as news.
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MURRAY WAAS: That's correct. Our hands are tied. I just wanted to backtrack for a moment and say your competitor, National Public Radio, reported this morning that on his second day at the U.N., and this is an exact quote, John Bolton has been a “model of decorum.” That's their exact words. So it should be interesting if NPR reports on the third, fourth and tenth and twelfth day and how long into his tenure as U.N. ambassador that he has been a model of decorum. It's kind of extraordinary that they said without any kind of irony whatsoever, I think, reported that as news.
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So, all of this occurred because reporters were sloppy, because they didn't do their work. I mean, that, in effect is the cover story, or that's what Robert Novak is insisting. And I have interviewed Geneva Overholser, for example, the former editor at The Des Moines Register, and she said some strong words about Novak, but what's interesting is because he's really at the core of a elite group, a cocktail party crowd or kind of celebrity journalism at CNN, nobody will come out and -- the Washington press corps is pretty much silent. The big wheels and big guns are not saying anything. They're not policing themselves. And this could have really deleterious and damaging long-term effects on journalism.
And one other interesting aspect is The Washington Post in this. And maybe Ambassador Wilson can talk about that, but a reporter, Susan Schmidt, has done a lot of erroneous reporting, kind of taking information from the administration to further attack him and Valerie, but also Bob Woodward has been on all -- a bunch of TV shows saying that there's no story here, that this is a lot of hype, and we're seeing an iceberg with a tip of -- some reporter is just seeing an iceberg because they see a tip of an iceberg, but there might not be anything beyond that. And so, the Post has been extraordinarily quiet over the last several months or the year and has only began to recently re-report the story because the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, even the American Prospect, have begun to aggressively report the story.
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Joe Wilson: Now with respect to the Post, you know, I -- Susan Schmidt's article was a terrible article. It was full of falsehoods. It quoted a partisan letter as being the authoritative committee resolutions. It took out of context something out of my book. In my book, I had said my wife had nothing to do with this, other than to serve as a conduit. She dropped that really important phrase and said that I had written that my wife had nothing to do with it. It was a real -- just a fundamentally bad article.
Now, with respect to Woodward, the great irony in all of this is that, of course, Woodward was hanging around the White House and dealing with the most senior officials of our government for several years while he was writing his two books, the second of which was Plan of Attack, and you know, I think the question for Woodward once all is said and done is, ‘you were sniffing around there. You were talking to all of these people on a daily basis. You were basically taking their dictation, and you didn't sniff out a story? You didn't sniff out a story that might actually be rather important.’