Plame Affair - Valerie Wilson's Role in Joe Wilson's Selection

Valerie Wilson's Role in Joe Wilson's Selection

The Wilsons and CIA memoranda presented in the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, indicate that Ambassador Wilson's diplomatic experience in Africa, and particularly in Niger, led to his selection for the mission to Niger. He is fluent in French, and, during his diplomatic career prior to the trip, he had served as a U.S. State Department general services officer in Niger, as an ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in both Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and Iraq (taking over as Chief of Mission during the 1990–91 Gulf War), in other diplomatic postings, and in subsequent national security and military advisory roles concerning U.S.-African affairs under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Further information: Joseph C. Wilson#Diplomatic career

After being consulted by her superiors at the CIA about whom to send on the mission, Valerie E. Wilson, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested that she ask Ambassador Wilson, her husband, whom she had married in 1998, whether or not he might be interested in making such a trip.

In the book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, as Corn observes (before its release on September 8, 2006), they consider the issue of "whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there," presenting "new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."

In his testimony to the grand jury, Libby testified that both he and Vice President Cheney believed that Joseph Wilson was qualified for the mission, though wondered if he would have been selected had his wife not worked at the CIA.

Subsequent press accounts reported that "White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment."

In his book, Tenet writes "Mid-level officials in CPD decided on their own initiative to he'd helped them on a project once before, and he'd be easy to contact because his wife worked in CPD."

On March 16, 2007, Valerie Plame addressed this question in sworn testimony to Congress: "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority.... It's been borne out in the testimony during the Libby trial, and I can tell you that it just doesn't square with the facts". She then explains that while discussing the alleged Niger yellowcake inquiry by Vice President Cheney with an "upset" co-worker, "someone passed by -- another officer heard this...And he suggested, 'Well why don't we send Joe?'...We went to my branch chief, or supervisor. My colleague suggested this idea...he (supervisor) asked me to draft a quick e-mail to the chief of our Counterproliferation Division, letting him know that this was -- might happen." She claims that she was not involved in recommending or sending him because an unknown Officer who "passed by" had "suggested" her husband to her first. Plame clearly states that recommendations, introductions, e-mails and promotion of this trip she put forth were not from her, they were from "someone" who "passed by".

In response to Plame's testimony, Republican Senators Kit Bond, Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr submitted additional views to the Senate report that stated "Mrs. Wilson told the CIA Inspector General that she suggested her husband for the trip, she told our committee staff that she could not remember whether she did or her boss did, and told the House Committee, emphatically, that she did not suggest him." Also in the additional views is the full text of an e-mail message sent by Plame on February 12, 2002 to the Directorate of Operations at CPD, in which she writes that Joe Wilson "may be in a position to assist" the CIA's inquiries into the Niger reports.

In a review of Plame's memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, Alan Cooperman writes for the Washington Post that "by her own account, Valerie Wilson neither came up with the idea nor approved it. But she did participate in the process and flogged her husband's credentials." Plame writes in her book that Joe Wilson was "too upset to listen" to her explanations after learning years later about the February 12, 2002 email she had sent up the chain of command outlining his credentials.