I think Wilson got hooked up with McGovern and other VIPS when Plame was working for Alan Foley at WINPAC. McGovern and Foley were friends and both had been Soviet analysts at the CIA. VIPS officially formed in January 2003, but loosely began to associate and get together the previous year. My gut told me McGovern and VIPS are behind much of this and that's the trail I've been following--even before the Wilson op-ed hit the Times. Since March 2003 or so he's been parroting openly and anonymously their lines about cooked intelligence.
I do believe Wilson's trip began legitimately (he also made one in 1999), which would explain why he didn't comment on the "16 words" in interviews after the SOTU address. I don't think it was a set-up for future use and the explanation about not being sure they were talking about Niger was cooked up when they came up with the idea to use trip.
I found something interesting that might support that when I checked to see what McGovern has been up to lately. Back in 2003, McGovern said of Foley:
"I have worked with Alan Foley. He is cut of the same cloth as Ambassador Wilson. I am betting that the White House's latest preemptive strike will not deter Foley and other intelligence officials able to put conscience and integrity before career from following Wilson's example. "
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1003-11.htm
He said it should get "interesting". I guess he expected Foley to come out with explosive accusations and revelations about cooked intel?
Yet this past spring he's been saying:
"The result? Many bright analysts quit rather than take part in cooking intelligence-to-go. In contrast, those inspired by Gates' example followed suit and saw their careers flourish. So much so that when in September 2002 Tenet asked his senior managers to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate parroting what Cheney had been saying about the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat from Iraq, they saluted and fell to the task. Several of them traced their career advancement to Robert Gates.
Folks like John McLaughlin, who now "doesn't remember" being told about the charlatan source code-named "Curveball" in time enough to warn Colin Powell before he made a fool of himself and his country at the U.N., while the whole world watched. Folks like National Inteligence Officer Larry Gershwin, who gave a pass to Curveball's drivel and similar nonsense; and Alan Foley, who led the misbegotten analytical efforts on the celebrated but non-nuclear-related aluminum tubes headed for Iraq, and fictitious Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger. Folks like the CIA Inspector General, John Helgerson, who bowed to pressure from the White House and from McLaughlin to suppress the exhaustive IG report on 9/11, which is a goldmine of names-of both intelligence officials and policymakers-who bungled the many warnings that such an attack was coming. Folks like the senior intelligence official who told me last month, "We were not politicized; we just thought it appropriate to ‘lean forward,' given White House concern over Iraq." "
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/38/10642
And here without naming him:
"Also included among the players in 2002 are the obedient national intelligence officer who blessed the insertion of the biological warfare drivel and other nonsense into the NIE, and the manager who supervised misbegotten analytical efforts regarding the non-nuclear-related aluminum tubes headed for Iraq, as well as the reports on Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Niger reports based on crude forgeries."
http://mideastcenter.org/mcgovern05262005.html
Sounds like McGovern is now saying Foley was behind the idea that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake and was trying very much to prove it. What happened between McGovern and Foley in the past two years to cause this rift?
The idea of McGovern knowing Foley before VIPS is interesting. I wouldn't take McGovern's word for it that he worked with Foley, though. I regard everything McGovern says as suspect, and at this point I take even the assumption that he actually worked for CIA as a question mark. Since you've looked into him a bit, have you seen anything from sources that substantiate his relationship with Foley or other items on his resume?
I've considered the possibility of Wilson's trip starting legitimately off and on as I've researched this, but at this point I see too many things weighing in the opposite direction--some major ones being Wilson's attempt to cover up his wife's role in arranging the trip, the dispute over whether the trip was authorized by CIA, the haste with which Wilson reached his conclusions, the fact he was publicly opposed to action against Iraq before he made the trip (which incidentally doesn't fit with his contention Bush was trying to fix the intelligence: if that were the case, why not send someone known to be pro-war instead of antiwar?), his vested business interests in opposing action against Iraq, and his echoing of a French propaganda operation that had begun prior to his trip. I'm inclined to think he didn't comment on the "16 words" in interviews immediately after the SOTU because he and his coconspirators were initially working behind the scenes through articles citing or drawing from anonymous leaks, such as Joby Warrick's March 8, 2003 article "Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake", Walter Pincus' March 18, 2003 article "Bush Clings To Dubious Allegations About Iraq", and Seymour Hersh's March 31, 2003 article "Who Lied to Whom?" Precisely what prompted the timing of Wilson's public outing I'm not sure, but I notice it coincided with the British investigation into the Andrew Gilligan leak, so I'm wondering if that had something to do with the timing.
I need to log off, so I will check back with the thread tomorrow. Thanks again for sharing the links and thoughts. I will ponder the McGovern-Foley thing you noticed and see if I can find anything more on the prehistory of VIPS. I have a suspicion Philip Agee's Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate network is in the background of it.