In her March testimony before the House, Mrs. Wilson described an impromptu meeting at the CIA in which another agency officer received a phone call from the vice president’s office inquiring about Niger and uranium. “A young junior officer who worked for me came to me very concerned, very upset,” Wilson testified. “She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone, I don’t know who, in the Office of the Vice President, asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Iraq.”
It was not clear from Mrs. Wilson’s testimony why the junior officer was upset. But as the young officer told her story, Mrs. Wilson continued, an element of chance intruded. “As she was telling me what had just happened, someone passed by, another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already — my husband — had already gone on some CIA missions previously to deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, ‘Well, why don’t we send Joe?’” That, Mrs. Wilson testified, was the beginning of her husband’s mission to Africa.
Sen. Bond’s additional views say the CIA’s inspector general told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Mrs. Wilson “made the suggestion” that her husband look into the Iraq Niger uranium matter. And Bond has been unable to find evidence to support Mrs. Wilson’s impromptu meeting story:
One area of inquiry which now seems to be unresolved is why Mrs. Wilson provided different testimony to the CIA Inspector General, our committee staff, and the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The account of a discussion among three colleagues about a phone call from the vice president is new to us, and apparently new to the CIA which has been unable to find the alleged participants. Still, it is a story worth exploring. For that reason, Senator Bond has written to the CIA seeking interviews with the individuals involved, including a re-interview with Mrs. Wilson. We hope that these witnesses will enable us to tie up these loose ends once and for all.