Q&A with Joseph Wilson (Willamette Week)

[swag]

http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=6817

excerpts:

Who do you think leaked your wife's name, and why?

It's now very clear that the two sources of the information were Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

And the leaks' purpose was to divert attention from your report?

Right. My article didn't pretend to be the definitive statement. It just recounted my trip. I make very clear that maybe they weren't talking about Niger or had other information I wasn't aware of, but on the face of it, it would appear they didn't have the case to be made in the State of the Union. But the day after the article appeared, the White House said the 16 words did not warrant "inclusion in the State of the Union address." That pretty much ended their statement, and then everything else was designed to divert attention away from the 16 words to, as one reporter told me, "Wilson and his wife."

Your op-ed must have been a hard decision for a career diplomat-to take on the administration.

That was not the difficult part. I had spent three months trying to encourage the administration to correct the record. All I got was essentially Condoleezza Rice going on Meet the Press and saying maybe somebody in the bowels of the agency knew something about this, but nobody in her circle. Which of course we now know was absolutely false. At the time I wrote the article, my name was becoming known within journalistic circles. The only way to put the story back into the box was to write it myself.
. . .
Have you ever heard, since this process began, I guess more than two and half years now, from George Bush Senior?

I have had a number of communications with him both telephonically and written. I have not talked to him in probably more than a year and a half, maybe a little over two years now.

Can you say what the gist of those conversations has been?

No, I have really tried not to characterize them other than to say that he has made it very clear that he is as upset about the compromise of identity of Valerie, as most other people are.

. . . more

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Moral: never trust a grown man named "Scooter".....

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Very important statement

by Wilson in another part of the interview:

This administration operates so far outside the parameters of generally accepted American political behavior, that it is not me who has veered. It is the politics of the Republican Party. There needs to be some reckoning inside the party over who owns it. Is it what I call the theo-con, neo-con axis, or is it those moderates who have historically led the party? I don't think the party will have that fight until it is defeated or it implodes, which it may well be on the road to doing now.