Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris, 176-177:
The day after Bush's State of the Union speech, Powell entered the office of Larry Wilkerson, his chief of staff, and handed him a draft script for the UN speech that was forty-eight pages long. Scooter Libby had given it to Powell at the White House. . .Powell instructed Wilkerson to start with the Libby draft and gave Wilkerson specific orders: he was to coordinate with the White House and the CIA to guarantee the speech would be as solid as possible. . .He told Wilkerson that he would be working with Will Tobey from the National Security Council, John Hannah from Cheney's office, Tenet, and [CIA Deputy Director John] McLaughlin. . .
The next morning, Wilkerson arrived at CIA headquarters to get to work. The team, including Tenet, McLaughlin, Tobey, Hannah, and Bob Joseph, assembled in Tenet's conference room and started reviewing the Libby draft. The process quickly proved tedious and exasperating. Wilkerson insisted on seeing the source for every assertion in the Libby draft--not just the citation but the actual report or document. Wilkerson forced Hannah to page through his clipboard and pull out the supporting material. . .
"So, did Powell choose Valerie to be on this team he created which set up shop at the CIA?"
I'd be very surprised if anybody like Powell would have been concerning himself with a GS-14 (actually, a GG-14), which is the mid-est of the mid-level drones.
But while you are here, I wonder if you have any exact date as to when Mr. Wilson came to be involved with VIPS.
As you know, that agit-prop documentary Wilson did, "UNCOVERED: The War on Iraq" was really a VIPS project. It was begun in June of 2003, and finished in just a few weeks.
Given that VIPS is an organization of *current* and former intelligence officers, you have to wonder how they came to get involved with Wilson -- if not through Valerie.
Moreover, one of its more prominent (and unbalanced) members is Larry C. Johnson, who claims to have been a classmate of Valerie's during her training days. And he claims to have been friends with her ever since.
Did the VIPS folks know about Valerie, and were they working with Wilson, even before Novak's column came out?
Affirming that he had called Bolton as an "abysmal choice" for the U.N. post, Wilkerson said Bolton went so far in his speeches that he was ordered to clear them with him or the office of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
The former Powell aide [Wilkerson] said Bolton was too aggressive in pushing sanctions against Chinese companies for spreading weapons technology and "overstepped the bounds" in the way he tried to block a third term for Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency.
----- Bolton Criticized by Former Intel Official By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer