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.
I agree about taking what McGovern says with a grain of salt. I know that I initially noticed McGovern and Foley were Soviet analysts during the same time period and that's what first made me connect Plame and Wilson with the VIPS. Then McGovern came out with some article or letter stating that he knew Wilson and Plame.
I've seen Wilson's attempts to cover his wife's involvement as central to what they initially were trying to do with this--blame Cheney for cooking intel. All of the initial emphasis was placed on Cheney's office knowing those 16 words had been disproven. They had to downplay his wife's involvement in sending him to say that Cheney was the one who sent him. The ultimate goal was to get Cheney to resign and ensure he wouldn't be around a second term to continue his neocon agenda.
I'm not sure why he would come back and report that there were at least two contacts he spoke with who said they had been approached by Iraqis regarding yellowcake--I can't find other evidence during that time period that he'd begun the anti-war, anti-Israel rhetoric at that point.
By March 2003 he'd begun to act as the anonymous source, but before that, so it seems that somewhere in that February to March 2003 time period is when he decided to put the story out there. I just don't get the impression that Wilson is anywhere near the mastermind in this. But then again, I don't have much to go on about him before 2002.
I'm going to keep trying to find something on why McGovern had an about-face on Foley. I've suspected some sort of rift in the group because we haven't heard that much out of them, but I also wondered if they were laying low after Wilson was exposed last summer.