August 13, 2005
I am often disappointed when I get to talk at length with people who are suddenly in the national spotlight, so I didn't expect much last week while waiting at the airport to pick up former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
He is at the center of a storm that started when he was asked by the CIA to make a trip to Niger, where he once served as general services officer. It is near Gabon, a country where he lived as an ambassador appointed by President George H. W. Bush. He's written a book about it, The Politics of Truth.
I don't usually pick up the various authors who travel to Tallahassee to speak, but I am a member of the Capital Tiger Bay Club, where Wilson spoke Thursday, so I agreed to take him to dinner at my house.
Until meeting Wilson and listening to his side of the story in detail, I'd sort of thought this whole Karl Rove leak investigation was much ado about very little except the unfortunate jailing of a reporter who refuses to divulge a source.
I'm better informed now. And Wilson is much more than just an aggrieved husband. He was acting ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War and was President Bill Clinton's top adviser on Africa. He knew the area and the officials he visited in Niger. He seems a logical choice to make the trip, whatever his wife does for a living.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/08/13/Columns/Wilson_weathers_polit.shtmlNice to see one more reporter discover the truth. At least she has the ability to change her mind when presented with the truth.
One down, 1000's more to go.