In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."
So Wilson himself was talking about his wife's involvement (or lack thereof) in his interview with Time on July 17, and no mention of the supposed "scandal" of Novak's using his wife's name just a mere three days before this was published. That IMHO definitely suggests that this "interview" preceded Novak's reporting of the alleged "leak", (because why wouldn't TIME follow up on that juicy scandal?) or that, like we know now, it was not a big deal to "out" an analyst who is not an undercover operative, since he did it himself! Geez, these people are just trash. It would be interesting to get the notes of the TIMES writers of when they interviewed Wilson for their story. . .