Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said Wednesday night that his criticism of the Bush administration's justification for the war in Iraq and rebuttal of the leak by a White House official that his wife worked for the CIA were not acts of moral courage but part of "what we do in a democracy."
Addressing a packed Salomon 101, Wilson detailed what he described as the administration's manipulation of information to justify the war in Iraq in a speech co-sponsored by Brown Hillel, the Watson Institute for International Studies and the Brown Democrats. He often interjected his more serious comments with personal vignettes of the White House and potshots at his detractors.
"I speak French better than Bob Novak ever will," Wilson said of the conservative columnist who first published the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzger-ald's investigation of the events that led to the revelation of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity has focused on leaks to several Washington journalists. New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for 85 days this summer for refusing to reveal her source in testimony before the special prosecutor.
Wilson said Novak's name rarely appears in media reports because "he sang like a canary to the special prosecutor the minute he was face-to-face with him."
"Our press suspended its cynicism," Wilson said when asked about the media's role in the political storm now referred to as the Plame Affair. "I would hope that our press, when it comes out of this period, will begin to ... question whether or not you really should challenge the government," he added.
Reiterating comments he has made in countless media appearances in the past two and a half years, Wilson said Saddam Hussein posed no threat to the national security of Iraq's neighboring countries or to the United States. He added that the decision to go to war was a purely political one that has since failed.
"A number of things (the Bush administration) did were illegal. The one thing we know was illegal was obstruction of justice and committing perjury," Wilson said, referring to the recent indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Miller's source and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, who resigned when the charges were brought.
"I'm no longer introduced as the last American official to meet Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War, I'm introduced as Valerie Plame's husband," Wilson said.
Often cast as a partisan critic of the Bush administration, Wilson said his service in the State Department under presidents from both parties refutes suggestions of party affiliation and that his criticisms are specific to the current administration.
"Joe Wilson served his country not as a Democrat or Republican, but as an American," Wilson said.
The former ambassador held numerous posts during his long foreign service career, but is best known for an eight-day mission to Niger taken nearly four years ago to investigate a British intelligence report that alleged Iraq had tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from the West African nation. The documents were later deemed forgeries by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Wilson said he was sent on the mission because of his experience in the region, not because his wife worked for the CIA - an issue that remains unclear in the investigation.
In July 2003 Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa" in response to President Bush's incorrect claim in his 2003 State of the Union Address that the British report was valid. Wilson added that he wrote his controversial op-ed only after trying for more than a year to correct the facts through internal government channels without success.
Wilson's article, to which he referred several times in his speech, explained that he had found no evidence in Niger to support Bush's claim and alleged that the administration had manipulated information to justify a war in Iraq.
Eight days after the article ran, Wilson's wife was outed in Novak's column, which attributed the leak to two unnamed White House officials.
Had his wife's identity not been revealed, Wilson said he "would have gone back to playing golf."
Instead, Wilson said he has since been the victim of "a campaign of character assassination unprecedented for someone who is not running for political office."
Asked whether he had profited from the media exposure that brought him from anonymity to the center of this year's biggest Washington story, Wilson said the story of "Joe Wilson and his wife" was irrelevant. Instead, he said, the public should be focusing on who was responsible for the Niger misinformation and the leak.
He said that despite his frequent speaking engagements, his income had actually decreased after the scandal broke, and that his book advance was less than $20,000.
The former ambassador began his talk - funded entirely by Brown Hillel - by urging for increased attention to U.S. policy in Israel. The former ambassador is not Jewish, but one of his former wives is, as are his two eldest children, he said.
"So long as there is a problem in Israel, and well beyond, the United States will be Israel's very best friend," he said. "The roads to peace in the Middle East still go through Jerusalem; they don't go through Baghdad."
Throughout the speech, Wilson said he had good relations with President George H. W. Bush. Wilson served under the first President Bush as acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq and orchestrated the release of 130 American hostages taken by Iraqi forces.
"In that administration I was considered a hawk," he said. "I'm proud to have been a part of that team."
Wilson repeatedly referred to an occasion when the former president introduced him to a White House official as "a true American hero."
