Ambassador Joseph Wilson Updates BuzzFlash on the Bush Administration's Betrayal of Our National Security
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Betrayal of the national security of my country is an act of treason.
-- Joseph Wilson
On August 3, 2005, we honored Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame with a BuzzFlash "Wings of Justice Award." We noted then:
"In a nation of quivering politicians and cowering media, Joe Wilson has fearlessly stood up for the personal safety of Americans. He is a Lancelot riding high in a Kingdom of Fear. The White House endangered the American people, but Joe Wilson didn't blink.
And Valerie Plame didn't back down from working at the CIA, even though Bush and his staff did everything they could to stop her from trying to ensure our safety. You see, the truth exposes the incompetence of the Bush Administration, and they take no prisoners when it comes to patriots who reveal the ineptitude and deceptions of the White House.
Joe Wilson, however, fought back on behalf of the truth. 'Baby Doc' Bush was forced to admit that Wilson was correct, but unleashed Karl Rove to out a covert CIA operative and smear the Wilsons anyway. 'Baby Doc's' father thought differently of Wilson, however. Bush the Senior recognized Joe for his brave efforts to save Americans in Iraq when Saddam was threatening them in the period before the 1991 Gulf War.
Wilson recently told BuzzFlash that he didn't consider himself particularly courageous; he is just doing his civic duty. BuzzFlash disagrees. Wilson and his wife Valerie are American heroes and are honored with this week's BuzzFlash 'Wings of Justice Award.'"
Since that recognition by BuzzFlash, our admiration for Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame has only increased.
This BuzzFlash interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson was conducted on the morning of Wednesday, September 7, 2006. This is our third interview with Ambassador Wilson.
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BuzzFlash: Reporters and pundits have used various terms -- Plamegate and Wilsongate, among others -- when talking about this administration's treatment of you and your wife, Valerie Plame. BuzzFlash and BuzzFlash readers see it as symbolic of the White House's willingness to betray the national security interests of the United States by seeking vengeance on individuals. We'd like to ask you for an update, on three different levels, to the degree that you can discuss the facts with us despite lawsuits and ongoing investigations.
First of all, there’s a lot of speculation about the Special Counsel for the Department of Justice and the status of his investigation. Is Patrick Fitzgerald done with his indictments, or is it possible that there will be further indictments?
Joseph Wilson: Let me tell you just as an overview of what this case has been about -- the other day, a friend of mine informed me that he had been in touch with a career Justice Department prosecutor who said that what was done in compromising Valerie’s identity was treason. I think that’s what it is. Betrayal of the national security of my country is an act of treason.
It’s entirely possible that Mr. Fitzgerald will penetrate the veil to get there. He made very clear in his press conference that he was unable to determine certain things about the underlying crimes because he alleged there had been obstruction of justice. I haven’t talked to Mr. Fitzgerald in a long time. I don’t really know what the status of the investigation is. But I have full confidence in Mr. Fitzgerald. He’s proven himself in this and other cases to be a valiant prosecutor, and not to be intimidated by the politically powerful. I fully expect that he can get to the bottom of it. But whatever crime was committed, was committed against the country, not against Joe Wilson, even though Valerie's and my name are associated with it.
BuzzFlash: From a technical standpoint, there’s confusion in the press, as there often is. Is he still continuing an investigation with a second grand jury?
Joseph Wilson: I have no idea where it stands. Mr. Fitzgerald only talks to me when he has questions to ask of me. He doesn’t share with me the yields of the investigation.
I will say this about the apparent confusion in the press: Where they’ve asked the question, they might well get an answer. The fact that they don’t ask indicates that they’re not terribly interested. If the press will continue to serve as apologists for an administration that has done this, then they are either willfully ignorant or complicit in this campaign to destroy the national security of the country, and to use political and official positions to seek personal revenge on people who they deem to be critics.
BuzzFlash: I know you can’t disclose details, but in terms of the public record, what is the basis of the civil suit that you and your wife have filed? And what distinguishes your civil suit from a federal suit?
Joseph Wilson: First of all, the prosecutor in a criminal case is not obligated to file a report or do anything else, other than to charge those people whom he has determined were indictable for crimes. The standard and the burden of proof in a criminal indictment is different from a civil suit. There are also other civil remedies for some of the things that were done to Valerie and to myself -- the violation of our so-called privacy and other things that are articulated in our civil case. We’re pursuing this not because we see any certain financial award at the end of the rainbow, but rather because we feel very strongly that those officials who did use their positions of public trust in order to exact a personal revenge should be held accountable. We believe very strongly that in the public square, as a democracy -- a great democracy like the United States -- people should not be permitted to subvert debate by attacking the character of people they deem to be critics.
So it’s a question of accountability and it’s a question really of finding out everything that went on, using the rules of a civil suit. You’re gathering evidence and taking depositions, holding government officials to account for their actions.
BuzzFlash: In the federal prosecution, the protectors and enablers of the White House always used to say that Fitzgerald is not prosecuting anyone for violating the disclosure of a CIA operative. He’s only prosecuting Scooter Libby for perjury. I’m just trying to draw the distinction here that in a civil suit, there’s a standard at which you could prove that a conspiracy still occurred. It just didn’t meet the standards of prosecution as far as Patrick Fitzgerald determined in the government's case.
Joseph Wilson: I would say that it is still not clear where his investigation is, or where it’s headed.
BuzzFlash: What is the primary basis of the civil suit, just in lay terms? What is the damage that has been done?
Joseph Wilson: It’s all contained in the suit itself, so I would just refer you to our website -- wilsonsupport.org -- which has the entire complaint posted. Basically, it's that we believe a number of acts have been done that violate our civil rights -- our rights to privacy, and Valerie’s right to earn a living.
BuzzFlash: Let’s talk about what the media have been saying in recent days. It's our opinion at BuzzFlash that the Washington Post editorial of September 1st ["End of an Affair"] was absolutely appalling, as was the article that appeared around the same time in The New York Times about the issue of whether Mr. Armitage was the first leaker and primary leaker to Novak [New Questions About Inquiry in C.I.A. Leak]. The Times article presented itself as a news story, but made editorial judgments within the news story. What do you think is going on with the media? The Washington Post editorial accused you of not actually being correct in your statement about the Niger uranium claims of the administration. The Washington Post, furthermore, contradicted its own news reports in its editorial.
Joseph Wilson: The day after my article appeared in July, 2003, the Washington Post itself was telephoned by the White House spokesman and told that the "sixteen words" do not rise to the level of inclusion in a State of the Union address. They’ve never backed off of that.
In addition, it is now becoming abundantly clear, if anybody bothered to read the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report and other reporting, that the Senate was briefed four months before the State of the Union Address to the effect that we couldn’t buy the British claims -- that we thought that they were exaggerated. George Tenet would so advise the White House -- indeed, he probably rummaged through his files after my article appeared. He offered his resignation because he had apparently forgotten about them, when in fact, we now know that the National Intelligence Officer sent a memorandum around to the government -- something he prepared for the Justice and Defense Departments -- saying that the Niger uranium claims are baseless and should not be used. So I don’t know what the Washington Post editorial page is about. My conclusion about their editorial was that the editorial board cannot be bothered to read the news pages of its own newspaper -- so why, then, should I subscribe to the newspaper? I cancelled my subscription. I’ll get my news from somewhere else, and I would encourage others to do so.
BuzzFlash: It just was mind-boggling to find in a supposedly liberal media outlet an editorial that was factually incorrect, that used a sort of rabid, frenzied tone, with complete reckless disregard for the facts.
Joseph Wilson: The editorial was also accusing me of having been responsible for the compromise of my wife’s identity. I think it sends a chilling signal to anybody who might want to bring relevant facts to the public table about how the government is acting. It suggests that if someone exercises their civic responsibility to hold their government to account, they should be very, very wary about doing so. Not only will the Administration take you on, but the Washington Post might try and besmirch your good name as well.
BuzzFlash: Again, we’ll state an opinion. You can reply to it or not. But the Post was doing what the White House did, back when this all started. It was making a political hit on you. There’s no other way to explain it, since they continued to disseminate information that was incorrect, and which was refuted by their own news stories over the years.
Joseph Wilson: That’s certainly my opinion. Of course, they did it again this morning with Mr. Broder’s article ["One Leak and a Flood of Silliness", September 7]. He begins by saying that everybody behaved badly, particularly me and Mr. Fitzgerald. And we owe Karl Rove an apology. Of course, we know from testimony that Mr. Rove was, in fact, the original source for Time magazine. We have read excerpts from Hubris, and I know from my own conversations, that Rove was calling Chris Matthews and saying my wife was fair game, and Hubris will report that Rove also told Matthews that, to paraphrase, "Wilson screwed the White House. Now they were going to screw the Wilsons." Again I go back to what my friend said: What they had done to Valerie was treason. So, how do we owe Rove an apology?
BuzzFlash: What has happened here? It’s almost as though part of the media has lost their minds. It doesn’t make any sense. The media’s supposed to be a reasoned intermediary. We know every Democrat and Republican puts a spin on things, and the media’s supposed to be a mediator of all that, to give us some balanced sense between the two. That all seems to have been lost on this issue, particularly in the last two weeks. They seemed to have just swallowed the administration line that this was all a kerfuffle and just an accidental leak by Armitage. Case closed.
Joseph Wilson: Right. And in so doing, they completely ignore what the authors of Hubris have said -- Michael Isikoff and David Corn. When the book comes out, it will say very clearly that there were parallel operations -- that there was, in fact, a concerted effort within the White House to compromise Valerie's identity and to discredit me.
I must say, having read these things over the last several days, it strikes me that there is a a tendency to want not to be confused by the facts, because certain minds have been made up. Either the press is willfully ignorant, or they’re complicit in the White House campaign. I think certainly in the case of the Washington Post and Mr. Broder, they’re complicit.
BuzzFlash: In the end, they say you were incorrect in your claim about the Niger uranium -- even though the White House and the 9/11 Commission have admitted you were correct. We think it's important to go back, to read Novak’s columns, and see what the White House’s megaphone. Mr. Novak, was saying back then. One of the things we distinctly recall at the time this story broke was that the CIA had actually told the White House in the autumn, before the President included the infamous "sixteen words" in his State of the Union speech, that this was not to be used, that the sources were not confirmed, that it wasn’t reliable information. The Niger claim had actually been pulled from an earlier speech, but then somehow ended up in the State of the Union address. Condoleezza Rice has said that it was an error. It was just a mistake, sort of, that it ended up in the State of the Union speech. Given all this, I guess I would have to ask the Washington Post, how could they claim that you made an erroneous charge?
Joseph Wilson: Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve offered over the years to meet with their editorial board. I’ve never gotten the courtesy of a response. But it’s hard for me to say, not really knowing these people very well, not being part of that group, what their thinking is on this. But you’re absolutely right that it was reported at the time, in their own newspaper. Condoleezza Rice offered an apology. Stephen Hadley offered his resignation. So I’m the one who behaved badly, or I was incorrect? There was never anything to the story, and everybody knew it. Colin Powell said we all knew there was nothing to the story. I don’t know what the Post was thinking. They are basically one of the many institutions that abdicated their responsibility to provide some semblance of oversight over this administration.
One other thing about the Post ... I think it’s been clear to anybody who cares about the news that, for awhile, that the quality of reporting in what we call mainstream media has been declining. I think one reason why you see such a surge in popularity of the so-called blog world is a direct response to that. It is the American way. If you don’t like what you’re getting from your normal provider, you go find another provider. I think that’s what people are doing. And I must say I’m one of them who now spends much more time going through the blogs than I ever did before, because I’m just not getting the quality of news that I expect and that we should demand from an independent press in this country.
BuzzFlash: David Corn has written in Hubris and in his blog at The Nation, that your wife, Valerie Plame, oversaw the CIA special operational desk that was set up before the invasion of Iraq to in part confirm whether or not there were WMDs there. And it has been said in the press for some time that your wife was a specialist in tracking the illicit sales, transfer, and existence of weapons of mass destruction. Can you discuss that at all?
Joseph Wilson: I’ve read accounts of the Hubris book, and it has been reported by the press that she was with the CIA proliferation division. I don’t think that she would question that reporting. With respect to a specific job responsibility, I really don’t have any comment.
BuzzFlash: Okay, let’s make this hypothetical. Let's say a person is working for the CIA and they have a specialty in weapons of mass destruction. And you have an administration that’s based its "war on terrorism" and the invasion of another country on the issue of whether or not they had weapons of mass destruction. Again, this is BuzzFlash’s speculation -- are there possibly larger reasons that they would want to expose a person who had a special knowledge of that issue of weapons of mass destruction? By doing that, would the administration neutralize that person’s ability and historical knowledge, and put them in peril? From our perspective, that would seem to be a treasonous act. To take someone out of the picture who has a professional knowledge of weapons of mass destruction and their illicit trafficking, and particularly in Iraq -- from our perspective, it’s hard to find a more treasonous act.
Joseph Wilson: Until I saw these excerpts from Hubris recently, I was of the view that their intention was to go after me, and she just happened to be one of the things that they used in order to do so. But having taken a look at the press quotes, although I haven’t read the whole book yet, having given some more thought to it, and having read some of the things that people like yourselves [at BuzzFlash] have written, I think it’s reasonable to ask the question of whether or not this was, in fact, an opportunity for the administration to launch this war against the CIA which ultimately turned into their blaming the CIA for everything -- for the decisions that they themselves had made.
I don’t know how to answer that, other than to say it’s probably worth people thinking about and considering. Certainly I’ve been considering it all the more so since, as I said earlier, I heard that somebody at the Justice Department was saying that this is treason.
BuzzFlash: We posted a commentary on our ironically-named website, LibbyDefenseFund.com, stating just that theory that perhaps the target was your wife.
Joseph Wilson: Yes, I saw that.
BuzzFlash: And we’re speaking in hypotheticals here, because even in Hubris, we’re talking about knowledge that is not confirmed at this point. But if your wife was involved in the effort to look into WMDs in Iraq, and the administration went ahead at a time when these findings were still inconclusive, one can only speculate that in their effort to blame the CIA for all that -- Valerie Plame could have been the target, and you’re really just collateral damage. But that’s our speculation. We’re not asking you to weigh in on that.
Joseph Wilson: I think it’s very interesting speculation. I hope that one day we’ll find the answers here.
BuzzFlash: Finally, let me just ask you a personal question. You weren’t looking for like a fight. What would you be doing now if you hadn’t written that column, and you hadn’t gone to Niger, and none of this ever arose? You’re suddenly a very public figure.
Joseph Wilson: I had a nice, comfortable consulting business, which I would no doubt be pursuing, had this not taken place. I actually got into the debate on Iraq because I thought it was suffering a lack of expertise from the Niger thing, and because I actually thought that the people who were in the debate didn’t really know a lot about Iraq. Even Ken Pollack had never been there before. And certainly Richard Perle and Ken Edelman and the others who were talking about this had never been to Iraq. I got in the debate trying to bring my experience in the first Gulf War to the table. And I’m glad I did that.
My second piece, which was separate and distinct, was calling the administration to account for the misstatement of fact in the President’s State of the Union address. One of the great ironies, of course, is nobody knows the name of the person who put it in the State of the Union address, but most people who follow this certainly know my wife’s name. There’s really something wrong with that. And there’s something wrong with the press being so easily diverted from the actions of an administration to the name of somebody who had nothing to do with any part of it.
But to get back to your question -- had this not taken place, I’d still be in the private sector, doing my thing. I would hopefully have still been talking about Iraq, since I still know something about it, and I’m absolutely dismayed by the situation on the ground. But ever since I became "Mr. Valerie Plame," nobody’s wanted to ask me questions about Iraq -- which is too bad.
BuzzFlash: You and your wife would have been living a somewhat quiet life. Neither of you would have been generally known to the public.
Joseph Wilson: No, we wouldn’t have been known.
BuzzFlash: And you would have been perfectly happy with that?
Joseph Wilson: Sure. I didn’t get into this debate to seek fame. I don’t need that. I got into it because I actually think that, in a republic, the public square ought to be a place where you debate ideas. I believe that, in a democracy, it’s a responsibility of the citizen to hold his government at all levels to account. We do that in our democracy, whether it’s a city planning commission, or the state representative or your federal representatives. You need only to ask any mayor or city councilman or representative how many e-mails and letters they get every day from constituents, holding them to account for what government is doing.
BuzzFlash: You’re doing a wonderful job for democracy, because that is what this is about -- the full exercise of our Constitutional rights and the right to bring the government to account. So thank you very much. You and your wife have put a lot on the line for that. You didn’t ask for a fight, but you ended up fighting for the Constitution. We all thank you.
Joseph Wilson: I always think of this as a civic duty and civic responsibility. There are citizens all around this country who stand up for the Constitution, at every level, every day. And, frankly, for all the hassle we try to put up with, it’s nothing compared to the sacrifices of twenty-six hundred Americans who’ve been killed in Iraq, and 20,000 Americans who have been wounded, and, of course, all of their families who have been put in harm’s way or are suffering from the consequences of a policy that was based on lies, and which has proven to be nothing but a debacle.
Interview Conducted by Mark Karlin.
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Resources:
What I Didn't Find in Africa, by Joseph Wilson.
http://www.politicsoftruth.com/bio.html
Joseph Wilson Biography: http://www.cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html
News Analysis: Defending Patrick Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame Affair (Steve Chapman/National Ledger).
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
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