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Actually, the view that Plame and Wilson were running an operation to discredit the 16 words may be the most straightforward explanation. They had to have help, though, because Cheney's question remains unanswered to this day - why would you send a retired ambassador to do this, knowing he'll get nothing but official denials?

"the view that Plame and Wilson were running an operation to discredit the 16 words may be the most straightforward explanation."

That doesn't explain how the rogue operation was underway a year before the infamous "16 words" were ever conceived or uttered. It has to be about a lot more than the SOTU address, because that came relatively late in the game of the 2001-2003 developments in the WOT and the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

It was about a lot more than the SOTU words in Jan. 2003, it was about rogue CIA a-holes working surreptitiously a year or more before that to control US Middle East policy, to forestall any possible US invasion of Iraq, and to discredit if not impeach VP Cheney who was prone to asking nosy questions about why the intel agencies didn't know a lot more about Iraq.

Apparently Valerie Pflame already had set in motion the plan to have hubby take a free misinformation trip to Niger on the government dime (1) BEFORE VP Cheney even was briefed about the Niger uranium issue, and (2) almost a YEAR before the CIA had tricked the POTUS into uttering the "16 words" in a SOTU address. How ironic that bozos in and out of the CIA who made such a botch of Iraq intel utilized their own confusion and incompetence (or worse, mendacity) surrounding the subject to set traps for the WH......