...At that point Saddam Hussein was still a U.S. ally, but he was being watched like a hawk. In late July 1990, Glaspie, who had already delayed her annual vacation to America twice, packed her bags and came home, leaving Wilson in charge.The night of August 1, Wilson had dinner with someone he describes as "Saddam's principal arms buyer in Paris. It was so hot the air was literally shimmering right in front of the windshield. I get to this guy's house, and it had been chilled to 45, 50 degrees ... roaring fire in the fireplace and over in a corner a white baby grand piano and a guy playing classical music on it. The guy looks like a Pancho Villa figure, Mexican bandito.... We sat down to dinner, just him, myself, my wife, and five bodyguards-armed."
The wife is Jacqueline, not Valerie. The one who was a "cultural counselor" for a French embassy when he met her.
I wonder why they had dinner together...
Also in Burundi, Wilson met his second wife, then the cultural counselor at the French Embassy there. They spent a year back in Washington on a congressional fellowship, during which time he worked for Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, and Tom Foley, then House majority whip. "It was," Wilson says, "happenstance" that he worked for two Democrats. Then he returned to Africa as deputy chief of mission in the Congo Republic, where he helped Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker set up the process that led to negotiations for the withdrawal of the Cuban and South African troops from the Angolan Civil War.