Wilson vs. Rove: African trip lies at heart of controversy

Two-year-old assertions by former ambassador Joseph Wilson regarding Iraq and uranium, which lie at the heart of the controversy over who at the White House identified a covert U.S. operative, have held up in the face of attacks by supporters of presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Rove is a subject of a special prosecutor's investigation into how the name of the agent, who is Wilson's wife, was leaked to journalists. There has been no evidence made public that Rove identified the agent to reporters. Rove's allies are arguing that he was in fact trying to steer journalists away from taking too seriously Wilson's criticism of President Bush's reasons for going to war in Iraq in 2003.

The agent, Valerie Plame, was publicly identified July 14, 2003, a week after Wilson wrote an article for the New York Times about an investigative trip he took in 2002 at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wilson wrote that the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein's regime tried to buy uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons was wrong.

The main points of Wilson's article — questioning the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs used to justify the war — have largely been substantiated by congressional probes and the results of U.S. and United Nations weapons inspectors. A day after Wilson's piece was published, the White House acknowledged that a claim Bush made in his January 2003 state of the union address that Iraq tried to buy "significant quantities of uranium from Africa" could not be verified and shouldn't have been included in the speech.

Republicans are attempting to defend Rove by discrediting Wilson, saying the former ambassador misled the public about why he was sent to Niger and what he found there.

Bush supporters such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich contend that Wilson lied in claiming that Vice President Dick Cheney dispatched him on the mission to Niger. That echoes a Republican National Committee talking-points memo sent to party officials.

Wilson never said that Cheney sent him, only that the vice president's office had questions about an intelligence report that referred to the sale of uranium yellowcake to Iraq from Niger. Wilson, in his New York Times article, said CIA officials were informed of Cheney's questions.

"The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office," Wilson wrote.

The "Wilson/Rove Research & Talking Points" memo distributed by RNC Director of Television Carolyn Weyforth contends, "Both the Senate Committee on Intelligence and the CIA found assessments Wilson made in his report were wrong."

Yet the Senate panel conclusions didn't discredit Wilson. The committee concluded that the Niger intelligence information wasn't solid enough to be included in the State of the Union speech. It added that Wilson's report didn't change the minds of analysts on either side of the issue, while also concluding that an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate "overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts."

Wilson is vulnerable to some criticisms. The GOP talking points say Wilson has lied about the role his wife played in his trip. In his memoir, "The Politics of Truth," Wilson asserted his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

The Senate Intelligence Committee report states that a CIA official told the panel that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip and later sent a memo to a CIA official saying her husband had good relations with leaders in Niger.

Republicans dismiss Wilson as a partisan because of his ties to the 2004 presidential campaign of Democrat John Kerry, the four-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Wilson also has been more outspokenly critical of the administration since the publication of The New York Times article and the controversy resulting from disclosure of his wife's name. On May 3, 2004, in a CNN interview, he accused Bush aides of leaking her name "to intimidate others and to keep others from coming forward."

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, complained in a supplement to the panel's July 7, 2004, report about Wilson's "media blitz" and said "many" of his public statements "were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact."

Well before Wilson's article was published — though after Bush's State of the Union address — administration officials were backing off the contention that Iraq sought nuclear material from Africa.

On Feb. 4, 2003, State Department officials gave the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency information it requested about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Niger. It told the agency that it could not confirm the reports and had questions about specific claims.

The next day, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence, based on U.S. intelligence, about Iraq's prohibited weapons program to the U.N. Security Council. He didn't mention Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Africa.

On March 7, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the Security Council that the documents that detailed uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger were "not authentic" and "these specific allegations are unfounded." On March 9, Powell acknowledged that the documents were false. The U.S. launched the invasion of Iraq on March 19.

Finally, in July 2003, after Wilson's piece was published, the White House conceded that the uranium assertion should not have been included in the president's speech. Several administration officials have accepted responsibility for allowing it into the speech, including Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser and now secretary of state; Stephen Hadley, then Rice's deputy and now the national security adviser; and then-CIA Director George Tenet.

Plame's identity was first revealed July 14, 2003, by syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who cited two unidentified administration officials as his sources for the information.

Knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert agent is a federal crime, and that is the subject of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation. Part of that probe is seeking information about confidential sources from reporters.

Rove's name surfaced in a July 11, 2003, e-mail from a Time magazine reporter to his editor that was disclosed this week by Newsweek magazine. The memo says Rove gave a "big warning" about pursuing Wilson's claims and said it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues, who authorized" Wilson's trip to Niger, according to Newsweek.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said Thursday that Rove has done "nothing to expose him to any legal liability."