Report from Santa Fe; Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future.

And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today are Ambassador Joe Wilson. Welcome back. Thank you. And Valerie Plame Wilson, his wife, famous out at CIA agent, making her New Mexico television debut. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Well, the occasion for this event is Valerie is starting a book tour for her new book called Fair Game. My life is a spy and might be trailed by the White House. So she was a covert agent and really sort of a private, private person, then she was outed by this administration and now she gets to speak. So I'm really going to let you speak. What is the book about?

Well, I have to start at the top by explaining that the CIA's position has been that I am not permitted to acknowledge my government affiliation prior to January 2002. We went to court on this. We lost and we are appealing. Nevertheless, the book still, there will be lots of black lines in it, but I still manage to be able to talk about my training, my career, some of my operations, my focus on kind of proliferation issues, and then of course all the outing and the afterwards. And moving from being, as you say, is such a private person to such a very public one. Yes, and very, very vulnerable. Ambassador, you and I have done many interviews because I think this story is so important. And at one time, I just asked you, we were going to do a half an hour show and then I had asked you to do a summary of the whole plane gate affair and then we decided we do two shows. One is with the history and the one about what was happening then.

Can you, you're so good at this, give us the thumbnail sketch. In case people haven't, in case people have been under a rock for several years. Well, hopefully they haven't been because clearly now with the President's ratings and the tank, I think most people understand that the President misled the American people about the justification for war. In July of 2003, I was pretty much the first one to challenge the administration on some of the things that the President said specifically what he said in his January State of the Union address about Saddam having attempted to purchase uranium yellow cake from Africa. I wrote an article on July 6 of 2003, the White House acknowledged the next day that in fact that state that you'd never been in the State of the Union. And that article was entitled, what I did not find in Africa because you went to New York. That's correct, at the request of the CIA, acting on a request to the Office of the Vice President. I went to check out allegations that the government of New York had sold uranium yellow cake to Iraq. There was no substance to that allegation.

Everybody knew it. Colin Powell later said we didn't need Joe Wilson to tell us that. We knew that there was nothing to that story. So that was basically the genesis of this whole plane gate affair. A week after my article appeared, even though the White House had acknowledged that it never should have used that language, they decided they would seek revenge on me by betraying the identity of Valerie as a covert CIA officer. And it is reported that Carl Grove actually said, Wilson's wife is fair game. And that's what you took for the title of your book. Indeed. So how did you, I think you said in your Senate testimony, your congressional testimony, that Joe had brought home the newspaper, put it down. And there you saw Novak's column that you were outed. What was that experience like for you? That was the morning of July 14th. And we had indications a few days before that Novak had my name. But we never thought, of course, that he would go ahead and print it. So when Joe came in that morning and sort of threw the paper down on the bed, I looked at it.

And it was just a just as horrible sinking feeling. Within two seconds, you're thinking of my network of agents that I'd worked with, I think of my family security. I was thinking of my career, which was over right then, at least as a covert operative. Valerie felt like she'd been punched in the gut. I felt like punching Bob Novak in the nose. I think her feeling, her gut feeling has perhaps softened over the years. I still want to punch Novak in the nose. Well, I still don't understand why after Patrick Fitzgerald's long investigations, after the scooty levy sentencing and then the commutation of a sentence, Bob Novak is still walking around whistling Dixie and nobody laid a glove on it. Well, when they wrote the law, there was a cutout for the press. And that's probably appropriate because the real crime was in leaking the information to Novak. Now, I think Mr. Novak was ethically challenged in printing the information after the CIA told him twice, not to.

But he said it was a soft no. That's right. It's not a hard no. What part of no doesn't he understand? Yeah. He has about as much credibility as this administration. He's changed his story at least half a dozen times, so it's hard to keep straight. I'd like to look at your background a little bit because you mentioned your years of training and you have several advanced degrees, one from the London School of Economics and one from a Belgian school. And you speak many languages. And so your specialty in your government work was with anti-proliferation. That's correct. Would you explain what? Counter-proliferation. This division was set up in the agency in the mid-90s because there was a growing realization that these sort of efforts need to be concentrated, that this was a growing threat along with terrorism. And I was thrilled to be working there. I love my job.

I was proud of it. I thought besides terrorism, kind of proliferation efforts are the most critical to our national security. So I was fortunate enough and honored to work on some of the most sensitive operations that the agency had going at that time. And was it primarily Iraq and it was all Middle Eastern? Primarily Iraq or was there some Iranian work also or if you can't say this? All right. What I can say is, as of January 2002, I was working in the operations part in the Iraq task force looking for intelligence that we could give to our policymakers on the alleged WMD programs in Iraq. And then you had a very famous chapter in your life when you were the ambassador in Iraq during the first Gulf War and you were responsible for saving many, many American lives so that even Bush the elder had given you a commendation of your heroic. Well, I had been in charge of the embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. The first line of my obituary used to read the last American diplomat to confront Saddam Hussein before Desert Storm.

One part of my responsibility was getting Americans out of harm's way. There were 2000 Americans in Heidi and Kuwait. We evacuated all of them. There were 150 Americans taken hostage by Saddam's regime. Many of them from West Texas and southern New Mexico. And we got them all freed. There were another 50 or so who we prevented. We protected from being taken hostage by offering them safe quarters and diplomatic housing. And we got them all repatriated as well before Desert Storm. I met with the first President Bush on my return from Baghdad, 36 hours before the bombing that launched Desert Storm. I was with him in the White House and he write, he introduced me to the war cabinet as a true American hero. That is one of your taglines. Tell them what, you used to be the last man who spoke with Saddam Hussein, but now. Well, now I'm Mr. Valerie Plain, the husband of the first American spy ever to have her identity betrayed by her own government.

And you've often introduced yourself as a second most famous American husband. I'm sorry, the second most famous husband in America after Desi Orneas. That's how Stephen Colbert introduced me at the White House course. The most famous husband in Desi Orneas. Now, speaking of the course monitor center, then after you were outed, you had to maintain a facade of normal life. And I did see you on television at the course monitor center. So what was your life like then? Suddenly, do you feel there's a target on your back? Do you feel everyone's watching you? Sure, we have had threats. A lot of deranged people out there. And part of that is our name and numbers were in the phone book because you're living your cover. And to go, certainly for me, going from a very private life to a very public one, which I did not ask for, was extremely difficult. But we have twins, seven-year-old twins, and just having children keeps you from toxic self-absorption, keeps you grounded.

And that has been a blessing through all this, of course. I had read that once when you were introducing her, you said, and this is just, you are allegedly to have said, I would do anything to give you your anonymity back. That's right. I said that when I was awarded the Ron Reidenauer Award for truth talent. And during the course of my comments, I began my comments by saying, I'm deeply sorry for what your government has done to you. I would give anything to give you your anonymity back. She would still be working for the agency, had her identity not been betrayed, my scooter lily car robe, rich on a pitch. She'd still be serving her country. She'd still be looking for bad guys trying to do bad things in the United States. Well, we can all afford to cast away our intelligence treasures. I mean, you were trained for how many, well, we can't talk about years. You had a long period of training.

I was highly trained. I can say that. I love my job. And what, that's the damage. I mean, this is just our little story, but the repercussions go far and wide. What about potential assets who might wish to cooperate with the US government, or more specifically the CIA, who say to themselves, when they see this story unfold? Well, gee, they didn't even protect one of their own. Why should I put myself or my family in jeopardy, even though I have information I think might be valuable to the US government, I'm going to go down the road to the Russians. I mean, that is the crime. That's why it matters. Was there ever a damage assessment done of what outing you and stopping your work and your network? Yes, there was. That's a standard operating procedure. I have not seen it, and I don't believe it has been seen by members of Congress. Now, you testify to Congress. Correct.

And it's on YouTube. So I know you'll never be everything's on YouTube. You'll never be anonymous again, but it was quite really interesting. And I think that the questioning was really, really good. What is the effect that this will have? And what did you tell them? You know, it's so ironic as my former colleagues at the CIA, all of us knew that at any time, because of the responsibilities and the unique aspects of the job, that you could be betrayed by a foreign intelligence service or your agents, that can happen. That can happen. That can be part of the job. How ironic, in my case, that it was actually my own government, that was so careless and so reckless with my affiliation to causes for a political agenda. Yeah. And it wasn't a slip of the tongue. This was deliberate. This was a deliberate conspiracy to betray the identity of the CIA officer. If Scooter Libby or Armitage or Rove had been talking to the Russian military attaché for the purpose of compromising Valerie's identity, there would be no question that people would call it automatically treason.

Why do people pretend that there's anything other than that, just because that information was broken through an American journalist named Bob Novak? And remember, President Bush said, we will find out wherever this leak came from and whoever it is will no longer work in my administration. And then everything just got stonewall, no progress. Well, he's clearly not a man of his word. I think I can say that. Now, Scooter Libby, the trial, the commut, the sentencing, I think I interviewed you the day that Scooter Libby was sentenced, and then between then now his sentence has been commuted. How is that sitting with you? You go first. Well, I think what it does is a cast a cloud over the President. It makes him a suspect in an ongoing obstruction of justice. Because the only leverage that the justice system still had over Mr. Libby to get to the bottom of this was the threat that he would go to jail.

And the President commuted that. And so as a consequence, there is no incentive for Mr. Libby now finally to come forward and tell the truth, which is a shame and which is why we're pursuing the civil suit. And as for me, I mean, it wasn't a surprise given how this administration has acted in this and other cases all along. But it was, you know, I have mixed feelings. He, Mr. Libby caused great pain for his family, very poor judgment. And, you know, as Joe says, it just short circuited the process because there was no longer any motivation whatsoever. And then there was the quarter of a million dollar fine, which was instantly paid and was it delivered by Fred Thompson? Oh, I don't know, but you know, Fred Thompson. He's associated very closely with it.

Yeah, Fred Thompson raised a lot of money for the Scooter Libby defense fund, which in my judgment makes Fred Thompson a charter member of the treason faction of the Republican Party. What was he doing raising money for somebody who was being tried for literally betraying crimes associated with the betrayal of the identity of a covert CIA officer? And what I found strange also on Mr. Libby's defense trust to raise money for his defense was a former director of the CIA. Mr. James Woolsey, I found that very strange. Well, yes, no, you're civil suit. I read the judge's judge base. When he disallowed it, when he threw it out in effect, saying, oh, well, that's what people in power do. Can you explain? Does this make sense to you and you are appealing? So you tell me what your civil suit is asking? Oh, let me tell you first is we're not lawyers, but as we best understand it, he did not address the merits of the case whatsoever.

It was merely sort of a procedural thing. He's basically bucked it up to the next level, because he knows that this is going to be precedent setting. There's some real, very important issues that stay here. And so he just sort of took a pass on it. That's how I understand it. Which apparently is not unusual. This is this whatever happens as there's a consequence of the final judgment in this case will be precedent setting. And it's all about abuse of power. It's the extent to which a public official can use that public position, a position of public trust to engage in a private political vendetta against citizens exercising their first amendment rights and responsibilities to speak out and to position their government for the redress of agreements. The suit itself has three fundamental objectives. You get the truth out because we no longer have a chance to question in a criminal court, rove, liby, or omitage. We want to hold these officials to account for actions they took as public officials.

And we want to deter future generations of public servants from engaging in the same sort of despicable behavior. How can anybody in this day and age be comfortable that their privacy is going to be respected when senior White House officials have done what they did to what they did to Valerie several years ago? You know, as I was preparing, one of the things I'd like to talk with you about in mint is the role of media and the press and all this. As I was preparing, I'm always trying to present in both sides. But this is a fact. This is a historical fact. There isn't really another side. You were out it. And that's that. A lot of people have tried to discredit both of you. But that's still not the other side. And so how do you feel? Could you possibly explain another side to this? This is it to what happened.

What I have one of the lines I've heard is that the White House was well within its rights to show their side of the story to a critic in this case, Joe, that by showing selected portions of the national intelligence estimate and so forth that refuted, which turned out to be so selective that it wasn't, you know, it was meaningless. So, you know, I think you have to refer to what the special prosecutor, Fitzgerald, found that this was in Mr. Libby's case. It was like there was an obstruction of justice charge and conviction because it was like throwing sand in the umpire's eyes, he couldn't get to the bottom of it. Yes. He called it blatant and repeated line that did not permit him to get to the bottom of the story. And this is Patrick Fitzgerald really an impeccable, special prosecutor who spent so much time on this and now there's no now with the commutation it's over. That's correct and I think among other things it demonstrates the vulnerabilities and the weaknesses in the Identities Protection Act which was written just for this sort of thing so that there would be some punishment if you reveal recklessly covert agent's name.

So there's, I hope at some point in the future Congress takes that up and reviews it and rewrites it to tighten up those loopholes because he tried very hard to get to the bottom. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was passed in the administration of President Reagan and George Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, his president's father was his vice president. And he has said time and again he wrote in his book and he later said at the dedication of the CIA headquarters in his name, the renaming of the building that the most despicable of traders are those who would betray the sources of US intelligence sources. And I think he's right. I think he's right. What has happened to the Republican Party that this administration would gloss over it? Have they no shame? Have they no sense of national security? But yet that's the drumbeat that we always hear, you know, the war on terror, the fear, are we safe? Are we safer now?

It's politics of fear. In one of our earlier interviews you had mentioned looking into the abyss, you had to have dealt with tyrants before, you dealt with Saddam Hussein, you've dealt even Franco Spain. And that one of the things that really enraged you was looking into that abyss in your own country and now, and certainly in your own family, what you've been faced with. Well let me be clear about Franco Spain. I grew up there, but I'm old, but I'm not that old too. I have lived in dictatorships from Franco Spain through Saddam's Iraq and a number in Africa through the years. In my service to my country, I supported and promoted and defended those values that make our country great. And they're enshrined in our governing document, the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights. That is what sets the United States apart. And that was a fundamental pillar of our foreign policy throughout my own career.

And now I find, of course, I've had to come back to my own country and fight my own administration to ensure ongoing respect for that governance document. It's painful. Joe and I both served our country overseas as Americans, as all professionals do, whether in the military or in the diplomatic corps and intelligence service. You serve as an American. And when you come back here and both of us feel I think we've never felt so distant from our country's leadership. As citizens, when we watch what's happened to you, what can we do? What would your advice to the person who feels the indignation? No country has ever added their own spy. And we did it. And it was you. What can you tell the people who are just starting to rub their eyes a little bit and say, hey, wait a minute, maybe this is not how I, maybe things are not going in my country, how I thought they were. It's a matter of education. Understand the issues that matter to you. Try to get your news from a wide variety of sources, not just one or two or three of what you get in the habit of.

Because it, of course, the media is so fractured now. Get involved, whether it's on your local school board or at the state level or stuffing envelopes for a candidate that you believe in. Those are the ways you make change. It's to be engaged. I think the lesson of our experience is that you can rise above fear. In fact, you must. The essence of keeping our democracy strong is the participation of its citizens. And when an administration and its supporters actively trying to discourage that participation as they did with us, as they did most recently with that family whose 12-year-old son, Graham Frost, and with others. And you have to rise above that. Thomas Jefferson once said, people that, people that fears as government is a tyranny, a government that fears as people is a democracy. And it really is time for the people of this country because it is a great country and it's a great governing document. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have served us well for 230 years.

We need to defend it. It's time to defend our Constitution now. Let's just restate that wonderful line of Thomas Jefferson that when the people fear their government, it's tyranny, but when the government fears its people, it's democracy. And that's what we want to go back to. But where's the role of the press in all this? Thank you for being on PBS, by the way. Well, I think the role of the press is to remember that it also has some responsibilities under the First Amendment. There's not just rights and privileges. These are also responsibilities. And there's a real oversight responsibility. And so, and somebody like Tim Russell says, well, you can't say the press wasn't doing his job because it was just reporting on what the Republicans or Democrats were saying. No, there's a very real role for the fifth state. And that role is to dig into what Mark Feynman now deceased LA Times investigative reporter once told me the dirt ball stories. True investigative reporters go for the heart. They go for the dirt ball stories. They don't just report what somebody on the right and somebody on the left side.

But they go for the truth. And that's what's been lacking in the reporting over the last several years. And I would also say that I'll just speak to my case. During the time when there was a lot of back and forth in attention on Judith Miller and Matt Cooper about not revealing their sources. And ultimately, as you recall, Judith Miller, Miller was sent to jail for four months in contempt of court. There were a lot of, frankly, pompous talking heads saying, oh, well, you know, the first amendment and they're protected. And so, and they would draw parallels to that didn't make sense. This is, I felt like in this case it was Watergate or the Pentagon papers, but turned on their head. Here they were protecting government wrongdoing, or they were propagating official government positions. Without taking into, without taking into regard, what was really going on here? And so that, I'd just speak to that specific issue in our case.

And in the maelstrom of the arguments about the press and the rights and responsibilities, it was brought out that if the government official that is leaking stories, you happen to be leaking lies, you are not obligated to protect them if it's not true. That's right. There's a fair amount of sort of ethical discussion that's said he'd done on your responsibilities to liars. And I think it was The New York Times itself, which at one point had the imposes that if your source is lying to you, you no longer deserves your merits, your protection. I'm so sorry. Here I am representing the press and we've run out of time. I know that you're going to be on a pretty incredible book tour. You're going to be all over the country. Thank you for giving us your New Mexico premiere. And I hope, because we have so much to talk about, I hope that you'll both come back. And Valerie will be here at the Lensick on November 6th.

That's right. The book signing over. November 6th. November 6th. November 6th in Santa Fe, at the Lensick. So we will be back for that. And the book signing and so forth will be followed by a fundraising reception, because as Joe noted, we still have, we're appealing the civil suit and we still have significant legal costs. We still hold that. Yes. Well, I want people to know about your book. Here's the cover of it. It's called Fair Game. My life is a spy. My betrayal by the White House, by Valerie Plain Wilson, our guest today. Our other guest is Ambassador Joe Wilson, her husband, who also wrote a book called The Politics of Truth. And so I thank you both for being with us today and I wish you all the best. Thank you. Nice to be with you. Yes. And I'm Lorraine Mills. This is report from Santa Fe. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tos, New Mexico.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.