Many Players Emerging in CIA Leak

[MellowOne]

Sunday, October 23, 2005

http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newsstory.asp?cat=news&referrer=welcome&id=20051023/435b0ac0_3ca6_15526200510231865612347

WASHINGTON - It began with a clumsy forgery, led the president to backtrack on his own State of the Union address, already has sent one person to jail and has ruined another's career as a covert operative.

The cast of characters in this latest tale of Washington intrigue - the CIA leak investigation - keeps growing as a federal prosecutor tries to sort out who told what to whom and whether any of it was a crime.

Those caught up in the maelstrom include a power couple with a big secret, a duo of no-longer-anonymous Bush administration officials and a constellation of media heavyweights with secrets, too. It runs the spectrum from the biggest of big fish, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, to the merest of minnows, White House functionaries.

MEET THE WILSONS

Up until three years ago, Joe and Valerie Wilson looked like just another upscale couple on the Washington scene, juggling serious jobs while keeping up with 2-year-old twins. He was a former ambassador turned international business consultant. She was an analyst for a Boston-based energy company - a working soccer mom, in the view of one of her neighbors.

As it turns out, Valerie really was a clandestine CIA agent and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, exactly the threat that Bush held out as the primary justification for going to war in Iraq. And, as it turns out, Joe's experience as an African envoy also made him a player.

CIA officials asked him to travel to Africa in February 2002 to check out a report that Niger sold uranium to Iraq in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson quickly concluded the report was bogus.

[William769]

1. Doesn't syphilis cause leakage?

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. This is a great summary

Very useful for those who haven't followed the case closely.

Thanks! Great post.

Nominated.

[MellowOne]

3. I felt it was very informative

It helped me understand some things I was confused about.