In the book, Wilson claims that "after the South Carolina primary," he made a donation to the Gore campaign and joined his foreign policy group. In fact, Wilson had donated his $1,000 to the Bush campaign nearly a year before the South Carolina primary and in the weeks prior to that donation gave $2,000 to Al Gore and $1,000 to Ted Kennedy. Plame had also donated $1,000 to Gore's campaign in 1999, using her married name "Valerie Wilson" and listing her employment as an "analyst" with Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front. As to his working for both Gore and Foley, both prominent Democrats, Wilson writes that off to "happenstance."
As a private citizen, Wilson reports that he made three trips to Niger, a landlocked hellhole in the Sahara, culminating the fateful trip of February 2002. The only reason he cites for his first trip in 1998 was to "participate in a cultural festival," at best a half-truth.
It was in 1999, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, that Plame first recommended her husband be sent on a fact-finding trip to Niger. Wilson "was selected for the 1999 trip," reads the report, "after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region."
In his book, however, Wilson claims that he went at the request of a former prime minister to give a "crash course" to a new president who had just taken power after the murder of his predecessor. He makes no mention of Plame or the CIA. The story changes in the preface to the paperback version with Wilson now claiming he went to Niger in 1999 "at the request of the CIA to look into other uranium-related matters." He does not offer specifics on the mission or on Plame's involvement.
Although little is clear about this 1999 trip to Niger, the rationale for sending Wilson seems no more sinister than a fortuitous bit of nepotism. Wilson's clients had interests in that part of the world, and Wilson's traveling on behalf of the CIA had to enhance his business credentials and, ideally, the Wilsons' income.
"As an employee of the CIA, Valerie could have NO CONTACT with the media WITHOUT PRIOR APPROVAL"...
Wilson makes a stunning admission to Vanity Fair that has been heretofore overlooked. He tells the reporter that in May 2003 he and Plame had attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee at which he spoke about Iraq. On his panel was Kristof of the Times. Over breakfast "with Kristof and his wife," Wilson told Kristof about the Niger trip and said he "could write about it, but not name him." If "his wife" refers not to Kristof's wife but to Plame, which it almost assuredly does, Wilson has implicated Plame in a serious transgression. "As an employee of the CIA," he writes in the preface to the paperback, "she could have no contact with the press without prior approval."
http://tinyurl.com/yt9ygx
""As an employee of the CIA," he writes in the preface to the paperback, "she could have no contact with the press without prior approval.""
And Plame's meeting with Kristof is only one of several meetings with reporters for which she had no approval.
As mentioned in the chronology, she also met with the Washington Post's Lieby and/or Pincus on the Fourth of July in 2003.
All of these meeting are security violations, and very much the kind of questions Plame would face from her regularly scheduled polygraphs.
In fact, it might be this rather than her claimed "post-partum" depression that brought about her subsequent year-long unpaid leave from the CIA.
You would think it if was for "depression" the CIA would have given her medical leave. But they didn't.
During Val's hearing, the various congress folks made several references to her having breakfast with Kristof and Joe. She confirmed her presence at that breakfast.
Did Clinton's Africa trip involving half of his administration include a stop in Niger? As I recall, Joe was one of the ringleaders for that. Bet that position would have covered a whole lot of questionable trips and exchanges of various contacts and favors...