More on that Washington Post piece today: It presumes the “attack” on Wilson based on the idea that he only went because his wife got him the job was false, citing CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, who says he checked on it and found out it wasn’t true. Bzzzzz. Wrong. According to Time.com today, a House panel is seeking documents that “reportedly detailed former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s 2002 CIA-sponsored trip to Niger to investigate a report that Saddam Hussein was trying to procure nuclear material from Niger. The memo noted Plame, Wilson’s wife had a role in suggesting to other CIA officials that her husband would be a good person to send to Niger because of his experience on the continent as a career foreign service officer.”
Of course, his time as a Clinton White House official goes uncited by Time.com, but you get the picture. Valerie got her hubby the job. He went, he came back, he said two different things, 18 months later he lied about what he said to two reporters (Kristof and Pincus), he wrote a deceitful op-ed, he became famous and went on “Meet the Press.” And if you buy Cliff May’s notion, he probably earned credibility with all these sources and got himself all this attention by floating his own wife’s CIA status to begin with.
Which means, yet again, that it’s possible the primary source for the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson was Mr. Valerie Plame Wilson.