Former ambassador blames White House for leak
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/cnna.wilson.zahn/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Ambassador Joe Wilson, an outspoken critic of the
Bush administration's Iraq policy, blames the White House for telling a
newspaper columnist that his wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA operative. The
Justice Department is investigating the claim at the request of the CIA.
Wilson spoke to CNN anchor Paula Zahn Monday.
ZAHN: Are you still saying this goes all the way to the top levels of the
White House?
WILSON: No, on the contrary, I don't have any specific information. I would
hope that an investigation would yield the information as to who was
responsible for the precise leak.
What I do have are any number of journalist sources, none of whom I have any
reason not to believe, who have said that the White House was pushing this
story after the leak, after the Novak article, and including [Bush political
strategist] Karl Rove.
ZAHN: The Washington Post reported over the weekend that at least six
Washington correspondents were fed this same information. Why?
WILSON: Well, I think, if The Washington Post article is correct, I think
there were probably two waves.
The one wave was being this -- of the phone calls to the six journalists.
The only person who published an article was Mr. Novak. He's now claiming
that he wasn't called. But it was in that timeframe, apparently. Then, I
believe there was a second wave that occurred later on in the week, when I
started getting phone calls from different journalistic outlets, saying
things like, the White House is telling us that the real story here is not
the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife, culminating in the day
that I actually did an interview on another network, saying that my
understanding was that this might be against the law, after which those
calls stopped.
ZAHN: And why do you think you're at the receiving end of all this?
WILSON: Well, I had assumed early on that it was probably because the White
House wanted to discourage others from coming forward. And I have said that
repeatedly, that there was nothing they could do to me. I had already told
my story.
The accuracy or the validity, the veracity, of my story had been sort of
agreed to by the White House 36 hours or 30 hours after my article appeared
in The New York Times. There was nothing particularly to be gained by going
after me. But you might want to discourage other people from stepping
forward. There were a number of people at the time who were speaking off the
record to journalists about pressures that they felt out at the CIA.
Whether those were accurate or not, those were the stories that were going
around. So I thought that it might be directed at them.
ZAHN: Do you believe your wife's life is in any increased danger as a result
of this?
WILSON: Well, I don't know.
We've always thought about this in the context of what is compromised in
terms of national security, what operations, what agents, what networks that
have been put in place during her career. That was the focus of our
thinking. I will tell you that, increasingly, people are asking that
question. And I'm going to have to think about it. But I'm not -- we have
not been the recipients of any general threats or even -- or specific
threats.
ZAHN: So you're not sure whether you fear for her safety, when you say it's
something you have to think through?
WILSON: Well, I'm certainly concerned about her safety, but it's -- we had
not thought about it in those terms at this point. We had thought about it
more in terms of the violation to our own national security.
ZAHN: And, finally, I wanted to share with you something that Robert Novak
[the columnist who wrote the initial report] had to say a little bit earlier
today about this controversy. Let's listen to what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "CROSSFIRE")
ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs.
Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge
of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: You want to answer that question? Is this Bush-bashing on your part?
WILSON: Let me make a couple of points about that.
First of all, Novak also said that I was a Clinton appointee. In actual
fact, my first political appointee was as ambassador. And I was appointed by
George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush. So I really am apolitical in all
of this.
Secondly, somebody with Novak's self-described 46 years experience will know
the difference between operative and analyst. And his report clearly says --
his article says operative.
ZAHN: So what does that mean?
WILSON: That means that I think that he knew and he was told that she was a
CIA operative, which means that they come under the branch of the CIA that
deals with clandestine operations.
ZAHN: So you're basically saying there's no doubt in your mind that this was
a leak, when in fact he said, in the course of interviewing a senior White
House official, that is what he was told, and your wife's -- not her name at
that point, but at least her official capacity was shared with him?
WILSON: Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report. And he
said, a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative. He was trying
to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm
that? I said no.
After the article appeared, I called him and I said: "You told me it was a
CIA source. You wrote senior administration officials. What was it, CIA or
senior administration?" He said to me, "I misspoke the first time I spoke to
you." That makes it senior administration sources.
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