Here is a PBS interview with Joe Wilson.
Among other things, Wilson states "My trip out there, by the way, was not a CIA trip."
Here are some other interesting excerpts:
Q: Did they (the CIA) show you the report (from Cheney's office)?
A: No, no. They had a report, which of course was classified. They briefed me on the contents of it, and the report was based upon this memorandum of agreement.
Stop right there. He couldn't see it, because it was classified. However, they briefed him on what was in the classified report that he couldn't see? Does that make any sense?
Q: Did they [the CIA] say where these concerns came from, what part of the government they came from?
A: They did, yes. They said that the office of the vice president had raised questions about this report, and they'd asked them to look into it.
This contradicts George Tenet's statement on this that the CIA, on their own initiative, sent Wilson to Niger.
Q: So the vice president had made an inquiry to the CIA to investigate, and the CIA called you.
A: I think even "to investigate" is probably a little bit stronger than what the vice president probably said.
Yeah, "probably".
Then it gets real good.
Q: Why didn't you request the document?
A: It wasn't necessary.
Q: But if you're going to go investigate the charges that are made in the document, wouldn't it have been useful to show the document to officials?
A: There were no charges made in the document. The document was a purported memorandum of agreement between two governments. It was not necessary for the purposes of inquiring whether in the context of the uranium business or in the context of Niger government bureaucracy procedures, decision-making procedures, whether such a decision could have happened, whether such a sale could have taken place.
Q:But isn't it evidence? It's evidence.
A: It's evidence. It might be useful if you're a prosecutor. It might be useful if you're a private investigator. It wasn't necessary for the purposes of going out and looking at how the uranium business does business, how they do it. It wasn't necessary in terms of going out and generally speaking, talking to the whole question of how a government makes these decisions. Clearly if they had had the memorandum of agreement itself and the signatures on it, then that might have been helpful. But they did not have the memorandum itself. There was just a report of this purported memorandum of agreement.
Then the bombshell...
Q: So you understood that the CIA didn't even have these documents?
A: That's correct.
KABOOM!
Q: They had heard about them from another intelligence service?
A: They had a report from their intelligence service, from their field operative, based upon either a viewing of these documents or a third party's having shared with them information relating to the document.
Q: I see. So it's in some ways hearsay, or "We've seen something, but we want to investigate."
A: That's right.
Ka-pow! Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA based on hearsay! He hadn't seen any of the documents - the alleged memorandum or the memorandum that was supposedly from Cheney's office. Why did he even go?
Q: Did you ever call back over to the CIA and say, "What's going on with this stuff? (in context of the 16 words)"
A: No.
Ba-bam!
Q: Why not?
A: Didn't need to. Talked to the State Department. My trip out there, by the way, was not a CIA trip. My travel was reimbursed by the CIA, but I made it very clear before I went out there that I don't do clandestine. I can do discreet, but I don't do clandestine. As a consequence, before I went out, I also briefed the State Department.
The first person I met when I was out there was the U.S. ambassador. The last person I met before I left, for the purposes of debriefing on what I had found, was the U.S. ambassador. So it was perfectly acceptable for me to contact the Department of State. Plus, it was a lot easier, because that was the culture in which I had grown up, so I knew all those people.
Ridiculous. Now the CIA didn't even send him, even though they paid for the trip?
Wilson also said he is "apolitical" because H.W. Bush appointed him Ambassador. But Gabon, Principe and Sao Tome are nowhere near Niger (see previous post for maps that will make you laugh your ass off). And that was 1992-1995. After 1995, he was no longer an H.W. Bush appointee. Hello, Joe. Novak wrote his article in 2003!
When Novak said he was a "Clinton appointee", his most recent appointment at the time was when he was appointed by President Clinton to head African Affairs at the National Security Council.
Then he goes on CNN to try and correct Novak for calling him a "Clinton appointee"?
He was one!
Bush didn't lie, but Joe Wilson sure doesn't look like he has all of his cards in the deck, does he? Nor do the Democrats who keep defending this sham.
This, of course, all leads up to "Rovegate" -- the non-event of the century.
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