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Indeed the story might actually be about a CIA employee sending her husband to a foriegn country to discredit the administration's (repeated from the British) claim about "yellow cake". Then said husband violating the law by publicizing that trip in the NYT.

Remember that at the time, that trip was attributed to a request by the Vice President. It's been reported that a request was never made. Was there flat out lying going on?

Could it be that the real investigation that has been going on, is into Ms. Plame? That this Wilson stuff is misdirection?

Was a CIA employee using her position in the agency to hurt this administration politically? Did Mr. Wilson compromise OTHER agents on the ground in Nigeer?

We'll get to the truth of this eventually, it may not be splashed in the headlines, but thinking people will know the truth.

The Bush admin says they're investigating the issue--but they don't really say what or who they might be investigating. It could be they're looking into some of the issue you've raised either along with or instead of the "who outed who" question.

Interesting theory. How about this one? Someone in the State Department honked off that a "diplomat" of Wilson's "stature" [note Reuters scare quotes] got to do the Niger look-see and has a spouse working over in that agency. How very, very disturbing. And saddening. They probably thought "Let's out her, make it look like GWB did it, and get a two-fer." Sounds like something a State Department weenie might do.

I have been thinking along the same lines--media made it seem the Bush adm. or Cheney's office sent Wilson to investigate which gave him more credibility than if the story was his wife,a CIA operative,arranged for this trip. Then someone might have asked for his qualifications to do such an analysis and point out his strong affiliation with democrats and left wing organizations like moveon.org. Wilson's assurances that no yellowcake was being sought by Iraq was accepted and cheerfully used against Bush, without exposing Wilson as an anti war democrat that didn't even ever write up a report on his findings. He wrote an opinion piece in NYT instead. I believe Wilson just doesn't want to say the whole story--if anyone was trying to discredit him it wasn't with the name Valerie Plame--it was the fact Valerie was involved in setting up this trip and getting her husband, who has no investigative skills that we've heard yet,to go in the first place. The fact is this was not about his wife's name which could be found in his bio on Middle East Institute's website--it was about his and her agenda.