Did Joe Wilson out his own wife?

It appears so … and it also seems quite likely that those who’ve said it wasn’t a well kept secret in Washington as to the status of Joe Wilson’s wife were right on the mark. Via WorldNetDaily:

A retired Army general says the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, revealed wife Valerie Plame’s identity in a casual conversation more than a year before she allegedly was “outed” by the White House through a columnist.

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame’s status as a CIA operative in at least three, possibly five, separate conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel’s “green room” in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.

Vallely and Wilson both were contracted by Fox News to discuss the war on terror as the U.S. faced off with Iraq in the run-up to the spring 2003 invasion.

Vallely says, according to his recollection, the first time Wilson mentioned his wife’s job was around February or March of 2002 Γ’β‚¬β€œ more than a year before Robert Novak’s July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as “an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

“He was rather open about his wife working at the CIA,” said Vallely, who retired in 1991 as the Army’s deputy commanding general in the Pacific.

[…]

Vallely said, citing CIA colleagues, that in addition to his conversations with Wilson, the ambassador was proud to introduce Plame at cocktail parties and other social events around Washington as his CIA wife.

“That was pretty common knowledge,” he said. “She’s been out there on the Washington scene many years.”

If Plame were a covert agent at the time, Vallely said, “he would not have paraded her around as he did.”

My my my. What a tangled web of lies Mr. Wilson has weaved. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was known prior to 2002. Put quite simply: Joe Wilson is a shameless political opportunist and glory-seeker and nothing more, unless you ask the Rove-haters, of course …

(Hat tip: QandO)

More Wilson/Plamegate-related blogging around the blogosphere: Tom Maguire here and here, AJ Strata, Macsmind

Related Toldjah So posts:

Comments are closed.