Perils of Blowing the Whistle
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Perils of Blowing the Whistle The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity— A Diplomat's Memoir By Joseph Wilson Caroli & Graf. 514 pp....
...He is referring to the notorious "16 words"—Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union Address that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa...
...It also brought offers to appear "on more substantive news programs, such as PBS' NOW with Bill Moyers...
...Leftunmentioned is the 11 th-hour pardon granted Rich by Bill Clinton...
...Initially the Novak column failed to cause a stir...
...The resulting 500plus pages include the fingering of two Bush aides Wilson suspects of exposing his wife's CIA role to Novak—I...
...They dined with Arianna Huffington, Warren Beatty and Annette Bening...
...With Piarne's cover blown, Wilson and his wife treated themselves to "the pleasure of being photographed together [by Vanity Fair] as the happily married couple that we are...
...26.00...
...Bush, Wilson's second favorite President, pardoned Abrams on Christmas Eve in 1992, but Abrams' problems occurred on Reagan's watch...
...Novak wrote that two unnamed senior Administration officials had told him "Wilson's wife had suggested sending him to Niger" to investigate the purported uranium deal...
...Libby, Wilson gratuitously notes, once served as a top lawyer for Marc Rich, a "former felon" who purportedly entered into illegal oil deals with Iran...
...A White House spokesman said none of the three officials named by Wilson leaked Plame's name...
...The Ambassador also glosses over Novak's belief that Piarne was an analyst and not working under deep cover...
...Around Washington his critics call him Bob 'No Fact' for his sloppy tabloid-gossipy articles that often stray far from the truth...
...Reviewed by Andrew J. Glass Former Washington bureau chief, Cox Newspapers On July 6,2003, the New York Times ran an Op-Ed piece by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former mid-level diplomat who won wide praise for his work as the U.S...
...Wilson's newfound fame, however, has not assuaged his anger at the wrongs he feels he suffered from the "'neocons" he holds responsible for plotting a second war in Iraq...
...Wilson fondly recalls another moment: The two of them were alone in a holding room in Kagali, Rwanda, on Clinton's 1998 African tour when the President, "with tears in his eyes," asked the Ambassador how he had done in delivering what Wilson calls "the most moving speech I have ever heard...
...His number began: "Novak had a secret source/ Who lived within the great White House/And one day his secret source/ Told him of my beloved spouse...
...He admires his former boss for being able to do a crossword puzzle during an Oval Office briefing prior to a 1997 meeting with Alpha Oumar Konare, the president of Mali...
...To this day, I ask myself how his colleagues continue to tolerate him in their presence...
...Having long since prostituted himself to the Right as its uncritical shill, he offers little original insight...
...Then there is the role played by Michele Slung, a veteran ghostwriter well known in New York publishing circles, whom Wilson thanks as one of three "editors" in the Acknowledgments at the back of the book...
...When word of the role-reversing skit leaked out, Wilson declined to attend...
...Writing in February 2004, months before the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal broke, Wilson demands that Bush "fire [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the entire band of neoconservatives that occupy positions of responsibility under him...
...The FBI came knocking on Novak's door soon after his "outing" column's appearance—a truth Wilson omits...
...The effort, Wilson tells us, elicited a standing ovation in the magazine's boardroom...
...It is true that George H.W...
...He rails against the officials who "betrayed" President Bush by "putting lies in his mouth" while attacking "someone [himself] who had brought the truth to him...
...The Lears, we are told, "provided us with a warm and welcome refuge" overlooking the Pacific to work on the book...
...Wilson asserts that Libby is "one of a handful of senior officials in the Administration with both the means and the motive to conduct the covert inquiry that allowed someone in the White House to learn my wife's name and status, and then disclose that information in the press...
...Not until September 28, after MSNBC reported that the Justice Department had opened a criminal probe into the leak (revealing a CIA operative's identity is a felony) did the story take off, catapulting Wilson to ?-list status as a media figure...
...Anyone who portrays himself as a righteous victim of a political smear campaign might be better served by editors who delete ad hominem attacks...
...By Wilson's standards, it would be relevant to report that Slung was the editor of I Shudder at Your Touch, a 1992 anthology of 22 erotic horror tales...
...But it is for Novak, whom I first met more than 40 years ago when he was writing sharp pieces about the John F. Kennedy White House for the now defunct Reporter, that Wilson reserves his harshest vitriol: "In this fight, Novak was a rather insignificant blade of grass, willingly bent to the political agenda of others...
...It is a dicey business for an author to draw conclusions unsupported by facts...
...The author's evidence for fingering Abrams, another neoconservative, is similarly flimsy...
...I suspect many chapters in Wilson's book lean heavily on oral testimony about his 23-year Foreign Service career given to the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training in 2001...
...The union with Plame coincided with Wilson's departure from public service and the launching of his new career as a corporate consultant...
...On March 6, for example, Novak, dressed as a Wilson look-alike, lifted the tune of "Once I Had a Secret Love" in taking the stage at the Gridiron Club's nominally off-the-record dinner...
...That spot led to an introduction from Moyers to television producer Norman Lear...
...Since Libby serves at taxpayers' expense as Vice President Dick Cheney's foreign policy adviser and chief of staff, it is a stretch to say he operates in Soviet-style "hidden cells...
...Wilson brands Libby an "ardent neoconservative" and a "leading participant in the network of hidden cells that funneled so much disinformation to our political decision makers outside normal political channels...
...A reviewer following a parallel path might allege that Wilson did not write this memoir...
...The basic charge against him is that Abrams "gained infamy in the Iran-Contra scandal during the first Bush Administration...
...chargé d'affaires in Iraq during the run up to the first Gulf War...
...An encounter with David Corn, the Nation's Washington correspondent, in the Fox News Channel's green room, spawned an article by Wilson, reprinted here, entitled "Republic or Empire...
...Wilson's anger sent him scampering up the Leftward branches of the celebrity tree...
...A 1973 Harvard graduate, Abrams serves on the National Security Council as Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs and was an Assistant Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan...
...Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Elliot Abrams...
...Seymour Hersh was not a New York Times reporter in 1969 when he broke the My Lai massacre story...
...As proof, one could cite Wilson's interview with Tara McKelvey of the American Prospect, where he expresses doubts that his wife has "read the whole thing from beginning to end," and further allows that, "in fact, I'm not sure I have...
...Moreover, Wilson neglects to mention that Novak opposed both Iraq wars—a stance that may be tied to the columnist's antipathy toward Israeli policies...
...The underlying objective of this war," he wrote, "is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and the installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations...
...President Jimmy Carter, who doesn't appear in the Index, was not embarked on an "around-theworld tour of emerging nations" when he spent several days in Nigeria and some hours in Liberia in 1978 (not "1977") as the first President to visit state leaders in sub-Saharan Africa...
...Soon, the Wilsons were embedded among Hollywood's "progressive Left...
...In addition, Wilson accuses Karl Rove, Bush's top political guru, of "pushing" false tales that partisanship motivated the Ambassador to make trouble...
...That was three years after Wilson, twice divorced, married his current wife...
...The Politics of Truth contains other errors that suggest a weak grasp of recent history and an overly hasty editing job: Dean Rusk, not Dean Acheson, served as President Kennedy's Secretary of State during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis...
...In Washington, to be sure, borrowing is no big deal...
...His article, entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," shredded claims by the George W. Bush Administration that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium from Niger, the African nation where, 27 years earlier, Wilson began his Foreign Service career...
...Eight days later Robert D. Novak, in the sixth paragraph of a 10-paragraph syndicated column, revealed that Wilson's wife, Valerie Piarne, worked for the CIA on "weapons of mass destruction...
...Maybe that is because Clinton is Wilson's favorite President...
...The ""uncritical shill" for the Right did not go easy on Rumsfeld either...
Vol. 87 • May 2004 • No. 3
