(Former ambassador Joseph) Wilson details White House 'smear campaign'

[sabra]

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/breaking_news/12359459.htm

Wilson details White House 'smear campaign'

By Bill Cotterell
DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR


Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife'S CIA cover was blown after he criticized Bush administration policy in Iraq, told a Tallahassee audience today that the president's men play dirty.

Wilson discussed the war and politics in a speech to the Capital Tiger Bay Club. If anyone is criminally charged in the investigation of how his wife's links to the CIA were revealed, Wilson said, he expects White House political adviser Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief-of-staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the most likely.

Wilson, who made a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein was acquiring uranium, said he warned Washington that he found no proof that Iraq was making nuclear weapons. After President Bush cited British intelligence information in his State of the Union speech, saying there was evidence of such a nuclear program, Wilson tried for several months to get the administration to correct its error, he said. When they didn't, he wrote an essay in the New York Times with his own findings.

Shortly afterward, the identity of Wilson's wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, was leaked to some Washington reporters. A special prosecutor is investigating the leak and Wilson said that, even if no law was broken, "the compromise of my wife's identity was a violation of trust."

[rodeodance]

1. more on Friday's paper.

Posted on Thu, Aug. 11, 2005

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/breakin...



........Wilson said he was not surprised that the White House might have tried to punish him for going public with his report from Niger.

"The modus operandi of guys like Karl Rove and those around him is to engage in character assassination of those who oppose them," said Wilson. He recalled that during the 2000 campaign, the Bush campaign vigorously attacked Sen. John McCain among veterans groups in South Carolina.

"They cannot help themselves and may ay have succeeded, but for one thing," said Wilson. "When they went after my wife, they may have broken a law."

Read more about Wilson's Tallahassee appearance in the Tallahassee Democrat on Friday.......

[rodeodance]

2. "When they went after my wife, they may have broken a law." I hope so.

[damntexdem]

4. Oh, they did break a law, probably more than one.

What's to be hoped for is that they'll be punished for it.

[Lochloosa]

3. I have one question....

Who invited him to the Tiger Bay Club in Tallahassee...I'm shocked..not your typical liberal establishment...

[Lori Price CLG]

5. Wilson details White House 'smear campaign'

Wilson details White House 'smear campaign'

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose wife'S CIA cover was blown after he criticized Bush administration policy in Iraq, told a Tallahassee audience today that the president's men play dirty.

Wilson discussed the war and politics in a speech to the Capital Tiger Bay Club. If anyone is criminally charged in the investigation of how his wife's links to the CIA were revealed, Wilson said, he expects White House political adviser Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the chief-of-staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, to be the most likely.

<snip>

Lori Price