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Joseph Wilson, who was once married to outed CIA officer Valerie Plame and famously challenged the George W. Bush administration on the Iraq War, has died at the age of 69, according to a report in The New York Times.
According to the Times, the cause of death was organ failure, although it’s not clear what caused Wilson’s organs to fail. Plame, who is running for Congress, told the newspaper that Wilson died on September 27, 2019 at his Santa Fe, New Mexico home.
Wilson, a former ambassador to Gabon and long-time diplomat who served in Baghdad, challenged the Bush administration’s intelligence claims involving Iraq and Niger. The leaking of Plame’s name to the press started a federal investigation – Wilson argued that his wife was outed to discredit his exposure of Iraq War intelligence failures – and caused a major political controversy during the George W. Bush administration. Wilson and Plame were even featured in a Hollywood movie called Fair Game.
According to CBS News, Joe Wilson once said of War in Iraq: “This isn’t going to be like the invasion of Grenada or the revolution in Portugal, where you had people sticking flowers in the guns of soldiers. The more likely outcome is going to be a very, very nasty affair, with Shiite and Kurdish factions grabbing for power, reprisals against Sunni Muslim followers of Saddam and, in the middle, a U.S. army of occupation.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Plame & Wilson, Who Married After Meeting at an Ambassador’s Reception, Were Divorced in 2017
Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame-Wilson attend the 2010 AFI DC Labor FilmFest closing night screening of “Fair Game” at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center on October 19, 2010 in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Wilson once dubbed his CIA operative wife “Jane Bond.” A Vanity Fair article in turn described him as “a handsome man with a full head of gray hair and dressed in a Zegna suit, pink shirt, and Hermès tie.”
Wilson and Plame divorced in 2017. According to Washington Examiner, the couple met in 1997 “at a reception at the Turkish ambassador’s residence,” while Wilson was married to his second wife. Soon, he was divorced and married to Plame.
Wilson’s first wife was named Susan Otchis. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, according to IMDB. The family settled in New Mexico in 2007.
“Valerie Plame and her family chose to move to Northern New Mexico in 2007 after her covert CIA identity was betrayed by senior officials in the Bush White House to advance their partisan agenda around the Iraq War,” her website says. “After living and working around the world for the CIA, Valerie finally felt she and her family had found a home.”
Her campaign bio mentions her children but not Wilson. “Valerie is the proud mother of twins, Samantha and Trevor, who attended elementary, middle and high school in Santa Fe. They are now in college,” it says.
2. Plame’s Identity Was Unmasked After Her Husband Criticized President George W. Bush’s Iraq Intelligence
Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame.
According to The New York Times, it was Wilson’s criticism of the Bush administration’s Iraq intelligence statements that led to the leaking of his wife’s identity. She was a CIA agent whose career was compromised by the exposure.
At the time, according to her website, “Valerie was a covert CIA operations officer who worked to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She managed top-secret covert programs designed to keep terrorists, rogue nation states, and black marketeers from acquiring any nuclear capability.”
A Vanity Fair article summed up the controversy: Plame and Wilson were “at the center of controversy over President Bush’s bogus claim, in last year’s State of the Union address, that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Africa. The Justice Department is investigating who leaked Plame’s covert status—a federal crime—to columnist Robert Novak, presumably as payback for her husband’s public suggestion that the White House’s intelligence was false.”
As a private citizen, he was asked by the Bush administration to investigate claims that Iraq received uranium yellowcake from Niger. According to The Times, he believed the claims were false, so when President Bush made what Wilson felt were misleading statements about that claim, he wrote a Times’ opinion piece in 2003 called “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.
The famed Wilson column starts: “Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
You can read the article here.
According to Vanity Fair, National-Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice “admitted that the sentence should not have been in the president’s speech, because the intelligence on which it was based was not good enough,” and C.I.A. director George Tenet took the fall. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to former Vice President Dick Cheney wasn’t accused of leaking Plame’s name but was indicted in 2005 “on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to investigators, largely for denying his contacts with the media about Plame,” Politico reported. In 2018, President Donald Trump pardoned Libby.
“Rumors of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal had first surfaced in Rome in 2001, as documents purporting to be related to the sale of 500 metric tonnes of yellowcake (a lightly refined uranium ore) circulated in intelligence circles and among journalists,” Guardian reported.
3. Wilson Had a Lengthy Diplomatic Career, Largely in Africa
(L-R) Khaled Nabawy, actress Naomi Watts, Joseph C. Wilson and Former CIA agent Valerie Plame attend the “Fair Game” Premiere at the Palais des Festivals during the 63rd Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2010 in Cannes, France.
According to The Times, Wilson’s 23-year career in diplomatic positions largely involved posts in Africa.
He was well suited for the mission due to his time in Africa and the Middle East. “Wilson was posted to African countries and to Iraq during the George H. W. Bush administration and later served as Special Assistant to US President Bill Clinton and as Senior Director for African Affairs on the United States National Security Council,” a Huffington Post bio for him reads.
CBS News reports that Wilson “went to college at the University of California at Santa Barbara.” He spoke French fluently and “joined the Foreign Service in 1976 and did tours in Niger, Togo and South Africa… In 1982, he was made deputy chief of mission in Burundi’s capital Bujumbura.” According to CBS, as well as other diplomatic assignments, Wilson, from 1998 to 1991, “served as deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Baghdad.” At one point, he was acting ambassador there.
That wasn’t the end of his credentials. According to CBS, Wilson served as Ambassador to Gabon and to Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. He was also “political adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces in Europe.”
George H.W. Bush once called Joe Wilson a “true American hero” for helping evacuate Americans from Iraq when the 1991 Persian Gulf War started, a book called U.S. Conflicts in the 21st Century reported.
According to the book, Wilson was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq from 1988 to 1991 serving as deputy chief of mission to the U.S. ambassador of Iraq April Glaspie. Thus, he was in the “center of the crisis” when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, sparking the first Iraq War.
The book reports that Wilson was the last U.S. diplomat to meet with Saddam before the Persian Gulf War started in 1991, and he “told Hussein in no uncertain terms that he had to quit Kuwait immediately or face military consequences.”
Hussein “scoffed” at the demand. Wilson then “publicly castigated Hussein for his threat.” When war approached, he sheltered 100 Americans at the U.S. Embassy and was “largely responsible for the orderly and safe evacuation” of several thousand Americans.
4. Valerie Plame Is Running For Congress in New Mexico
Valerie Plame is a candidate for Congress in New Mexico. In a campaign ad that went viral, she drives a Chevy Amaro backwards on empty road. It’s called “Undercover.”
She wrote in the caption: “I’m running for Congress because we’re going backwards on national security, health care, and women’s rights. We need to turn our country around.”
“I hope to represent Northern New Mexico as your Democratic Congressional Representative. Over 10 years ago, I chose to make New Mexico my home, and it has become my heart. I have lived all over the world and have never felt more connected to a place and its special people than in The Land of Enchantment. Our state is magical in many ways, and I want to continue to protect its unique cultures and communities. From personal experience, I know what it is like to fight hard for what you believe in, and I will take those lessons and fight for your needs,” Plame says on her website.
Plame is running as a Democrat. You can see her website here.
5. Wilson Ran an International Risk Assessment Company & Was a Democrat
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Joseph Wilson moved on to run an international risk assessment company called J.C. Wilson International Ventures, according to CBS News.
Wilson’s sparse LinkedIn page lists him as CEO of this venture. Huffington Post described the firm as “a consulting firm specializing in strategic management and international-business development.”
He was a “left-leaning Democrat” who had donated to Al Gore’s campaign; however, Wilson rejected critics’ assertions that his Iraq War criticism was motivated by partisanship. Wilson was from a conservative family but served as a fellow in Gore’s office, according to a book on U.S. Conflicts.
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