Joe and Val

I've been speculated recently that Valerie was somehow involved in the outing of Valerie, and I've wondered out loud if Joe knew more about the Niger forgeries than he is letting on. The Junk Yard Blog takes the forgery speculation a little further with this.

I'm going to go out on a limb a bit here and suppose that when Wilson was talking about those forged documents, he wasn't lying. He simply slipped. He had seen them, prior to his tea-sipping trip and before the US got them (according to what has been told to the press, which very likely isn't entirely accurate--this would hardly be the first time the CIA has run a public story that is something less than a reflection of the real story). How might that have happened?

He could have seen them earlier if documents were in US hands prior to his trip, in the possession of the CIA, and someone within the CIA let him see them.

Who could that possibly be??

So perhaps he had seen the forgeries prior to his trip, and knew they were forgeries. Therefore he was telling the truth when he told reporters about it, and therefore inadvertently let slip the fact that his wife had committed a crime in disclosing classified information improperly. That's why he backtracked when the Intel Committee redirected its questioning regarding those forgeries. And in so doing, he skated pretty close to perjury. But he covered for Ms. Plame.

Now, still further out on the limb, we must ask Why? Put aside the forgeries question for a minute, and just ask why these two people participated so publicly in a grand lie? What's the motivation?

Call me naive, but I always assumed their motivations were political in the sense that they are dyed in the wool liberals who went over the top for the cause. JYB takes a different view, and actually, one that I find a bit more plausible.

According to National Review's Clifford May, Wilson is associated with the pro-Saddam Middle East Institute. Prior to the war he also associated himself with the Win Without War Coalition and a handful of other anti-war groups. Politically he had set himself on the far left of the discussion prior to the war, even with groups that opposed the entire Iraqi pre-war sanctions regime designed to keep Saddam and nuclear weapons as far apart as possible. All of this is interesting, but doesn't shed much light on his finances. But it does portray his politics; he associated himself with just about anyone working to preserve the Saddamite regime.

But. Wilson listed as his affiliation at several events Rock Creek Corp. What is Rock Creek Corp? Beats me, and no one has bothered to ask the dashing Mr. Wilson. But it is probably the source of his money. Or at least it's one of the sources of his money.

The question remains, what did he do to earn that money, and from whom was it earned? And did his public campaign of lying about the war have anything to do with it?

It is time to ask these questions, I think. Wilson constructed out of thin air the scandal of the 16 words, a non-scandal that has done a great deal of damage to the war effort in Iraq and to potential conflicts yet to be fought. We now know beyond doubt that he built that scandal on an edifice of lies, and it's apparent that he did so on purpose. Why would he do this? Self-promotion and the glory of a book deal, for a book that will be heading to the cut-out bins in short order now that he has been discredited, isn't a satisfying answer, at least not to me.

There very likely is much more to his story, and to his wife's story too.