Wednesday, January 24, 2007

JOE GOT MAD   [Byron York]

Some fascinating details on the CIA leak affair are coming out in the courtroom of the Lewis Libby trial.  This morning, for example, we got a better picture of why former ambassador Joseph Wilson decided to go public with his story, publishing an op-ed in the New York Times in July 2003.

Prior to that time, Wilson had been talking to reporters on background — his name had not been linked to the whole Niger/yellowcake/16 words affair.  But Wilson has said in a number of interviews that after watching the appearance of then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on "Meet the Press" on June 8, 2003, he decided he had to get the information out.  On "Meet the Press," Rice had said that she didn't know about the infamous Niger forged documents story. "We did not know at the time—no one knew at the time, in our circles—maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery," she said.

On a number of occasions over the years, Wilson has portrayed his decision to go public as a rather high-minded effort to bring the truth to the American people.  But on the witness stand today, former State Department official Marc Grossman described a phone call he received from Wilson on June 9, the Monday after Rice's appearance.  "He was really mad," Grossman testified.  "He told me that he was angry at the way he had been described [on 'Meet the Press']. He was very mad at the way he'd been described and that people were not taking him seriously…What he told me was that he had been described as some low-level person, and he was very upset by that."

"Did he say he was considering going public to correct a misimpression created by Condoleezza Rice?" asked Libby attorney Ted Wells.

"Yes," said Grossman.

01/24 01:19 PMShare