When Valerie unpacked her belongings in our new home in Washington in 1998, one of the first items she put out for display in our bedroom was a framed copy of the poem “Ithaka” by C. P. Cavafy, published in 1910. She explained to me that it reflected her own views on life as a journey. While we are not yet on the last leg of that journey, we have certainly encountered our share of Laistrygonians and Cyclops on our way, and the poem speaks to us only more today.
ITHAKAAs you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Timelines
DIPLOMATIC CAREER OF AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON
January 1976 Joins United States Foreign Service.
1976-1978 General Services Officer, Niamey, Niger.
1978-1979 Administrative Officer, Lome, Togo.
1979-1981 Administrative Officer, U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.
1981-1982 Administrative Officer, Pretoria, South Africa.
1982-1985 Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), Bujumbura, Burundi.
1985-1986 Congressional Fellow, offices of Senator Al Gore and Representative Tom Foley.
1986-1988 DCM, Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo.
1988-1991 DCM, Baghdad, Iraq.
1992-1995 Ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe.
1995-1997 Political Adviser to Commander in Chief U.S.
Armed Forces, Europe, Stuttgart, Germany.
1997-1998 Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council, Washington, D.C.
EVENTS SURROUNDING THE “SIXTEEN WORDS” AND THE DISCLOSURE OF THE UNDERCOVER STATUS OF CIA OPERATIVE VALERIE PLAME, WIFE OF AMBASSADOR JOSEPH WILSON
December 2001-
January 2002 First reports of Niger-Iraq uranium connection surface in the Bush administration.
February 2002 Wilson is asked to CIA headquarters to discuss Niger’s uranium industry and the possibility of a uranium deal between Niger and Iraq; soon after, he travels to Niger at Agency’s request to investigate the claim; in Niger he finds no evidence to substantiate it.
March 2002 Upon returning home from Niger, Wilson briefs CIA and delivers a skeptical report.
September 2002 First public mention of Niger-Iraq uranium connection is made in British white paper.
January 28, 2003 The sixteen words are spoken by President Bush in his State of the Union address: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
March 7, 2003 International Atomic Energy Agency announces that documents provided by U.S. about Niger-Iraq uranium claim are forgeries.
March 8, 2003 State Department spokesman says of forged documents: “We fell for it”; shortly thereafter, Wilson tells CNN that the U.S. government has more information on this matter than the State Department spokesmen acknowledged.
Sources have informed Wilson that soon after the CNN interview, a decision was made at a meeting in the Office of the Vice President—possibly attended by Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Newt Gingrich, and other senior Republicans—to produce a workup on Wilson to discredit him.
June 8, 2003 On Meet the Press Condoleezza Rice denies knowledge of how dubious the uranium claim was and dissembles:
“Maybe somebody down in the bowels of the Agency knew about this, but nobody in my circles.”
July 6, 2003 Wilson’s op-ed, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” is published in the New York Times; Wilson appears on Meet the Press, describes his trip and why he came away convinced that no attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger had taken place.
July 8, 2003 Columnist Robert Novak encounters Wilson’s friend on Washington, D.C., street and blurts out Valerie Plame’s CIA employment.
July 14, 2003 Novak publishes column revealing Plame’s status.
July 16, 2003 In The Nation David Corn publishes “A White House Smear,” explaining that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act may have been violated by leak.
July 20, 2003 NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tells Wilson that “senior White House sources” had phoned her to stress “the real story here is not the sixteen words . . . but Wilson and his wife.”
July 21, 2003 NBC’s Chris Matthews tells Wilson: “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says and I quote, ‘Wilson’s wife is fair game.’ I will confirm that if asked.”
September 28, 2003 MSNBC announces that Justice Department has begun a criminal investigation into the leak.
September 29, 2003 Washington Post article by Mike Allen and Dana Priest quotes a “senior administration official” who “said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. . . . ‘Clearly it was meant purely and simply for revenge,’ the senior official said of the leak. . . . A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson’s wife as ‘fair game.’ ”
October 7, 2003 President Bush states that the Justice Department will “come to the bottom of this.”
December 5, 2003 A Financial Times article by James Harding quotes a “senior White House official” who says “We have rolled the earthmovers in over this one.”
December 30, 2003 Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the leak investigation.
January 21, 2004 Time reports that a federal grand jury has begun hearing testimony.
February 5, 2004 UPI’s Richard Sale reports that “Federal lawenforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer’s identity . . . . The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.”
March 5, 2004 Newsday’s Tom Brune reports that the grand jury has issued subpoenas summoning phone logs of Air Force One from July 7-12, from the July 12 press gaggle, and records of the White House Iraq Group from July 6-30.
Acknowledgments
A BOOK, I HAVE LEARNED, is not just the labor of the author’s love. There is a whole team of de
dicated wordsmiths, editors, marketers, and publicists behind the writer working to make the stories as compelling and readable as possible.
The team at Carroll & Graf and the Avalon Publishing Group is no exception and I offer my heartfelt thanks to everybody who participated in producing this book, particularly Carroll & Graf Editor-in-Chief Philip Turner, Associate Editor Keith Wallman, Publisher Will Balliett, Avalon CEO Charlie Winton, copyeditor Phil Gaskill, indexer Melanie Piper, editors Peter Skutches, Don Weise, and Michele Slung, interior designer Simon Sullivan, Art Director Linda Kosarin, designer Lorie Pagnozzi, Production Director Michael Walters, Senior Managing Editor Claiborne Hancock, and Sandee Roston and Karen Auerbach, Senior Director of Marketing and Director of Publicity, respectively. While errors of fact are a reflection of my own fading memory, if this is a good read, it is largely thanks to their contributions.
Had it not been for Jon Elliot, talk-show radio host on the West Coast, and Barbara Monteiro, a publicist from New York, I never would have written this book. Not only did they encourage me but they also put me in contact with Carroll & Graf, which started the ball rolling.
Kim Fararo, the editor of the Perspective section of the San Jose Mercury News, offered me my first opportunity to share my views publicly in an opinion piece. I published three articles in Perspective. Her personal attention and patient editing ensured there was some coherence from the jumbled prose I sent her way. Bruce McLeod, editor of the Los Angeles Times, also gave me a chance to speak to readers in my home state, California, and forced me to think about what Saddam really was like, giving rise to the “big cat” metaphor. David Shipley, editor of the New York Times opinion section, kept space available for me for weeks while I determined whether I was going to have to attach my own name to the uranium story to make the administration finally come clean with the American people on the fiction of the sixteen words in the president’s State of the Union address. Many of the people have told me since that the understated tone of the article added to its impact. Those who know me know that I am not an understated personality, so David was key to helping me find an effective “author’s voice.” I am most appreciative to all three editors for their help and support. I learned from each.
Chris Wolf has helped my family in too many ways to recount both as our lawyer and as our next door neighbor. His cousin, Audrey Wolf, literary agent, has navigated the publishing waters on my behalf and made it easy for me to concentrate on telling the story.
Lyn and Norman Lear provided us with a warm and welcome refuge in the early days of drafting the book. Their friendship and support during the most intense period of public scrutiny and attention was most welcome. Bill Moyers was kind enough to make the introductions and for that, as well as for giving me a forum on his terrific program, NOW, I will be eternally grateful.
Robert Greenwald and Mike Farrell were always there as we tried to add some sanity to a debate dominated by ideologues determined to take the country we love into a destructive and senseless war. The documentary Uncovered, produced by Robert, is a stinging indictment of how the Bush administration misled the American people, and I am proud to have participated in it.
Katrina vanden Heuvel and David Corn of The Nation, and Tom Andrews, the Executive Director of Win Without War, were other tenacious debaters whose support and friendship throughout has been unflagging. Though we were few in number, we were strong, supported by organizations like MoveOn.org which is doing so much to bring policy debate back to the grassroots. Valerie and I feel privileged to count such patriotic and concerned citizens among our friends.
Thanks also go to Jon Dindas and the team at Greater Talent Network.
Author Ron Suskind was extremely generous in allowing me to quote liberally from his book The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill.
Joshua Micah Marshall’s blog, Talkingpointsmemo.com, is a daily source of insight that keeps me and thousands of others informed every day. Special thanks for the letter from his online document collection pictured here on page 359. University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole’s Web site is one of the most consistently thoughtful and erudite sources for analysis of the ongoing situation in Iraq.
There are so many friends, acquaintances, and people Valerie and I have never met who have offered their support in the months since we found ourselves under attack by our own government. We are most appreciative. They have reinforced our belief about our country and about the vast majority of its citizens and have been a source of strength as I continue to speak out. Many of those who have been in touch with me were hostages in the first Gulf War, offering their steadfast support. Roland Bergheer, reflecting what many others conveyed to me, said in one interview, “I would give my life for him since he put his on the line for all of us.” I an enormously appreciative of this loyalty, but in fact, we all put our lives on the line for our country back then when our government was doing the right thing.
My brother, Willie, a staunch Orange County Republican who was more incensed at what happened to Valerie and me than anybody, has been incredibly supportive throughout the last year. He is so furious that he has promised me that Bush-Cheney will not carry his town, San Clemente, California, in the 2004 election. Only when the Republican party reflects more than the evangelical Right and the neoconservative, illiberal imperialists will he probably revert to his Republican roots.
There is no more intrepid band of public servants than the diplomats who serve their country overseas, often in some of the most challenging countries in the world. Much maligned by those whose foreign experience goes little beyond the plush lobbies of five star hotels in European capitals, the Foreign Service is a noble calling. Who knows how many wars have been prevented or conflicts resolved thanks to imaginative and tenacious diplomacy. This story is as much theirs as it is mine and I hope it is a representative and interesting rendition of life as a diplomat.
My two adult twin children, Sabrina and Joe, have followed me around the world and have always been there for me, through thick and thin. It is a great inspiration to be able to call them friends as well as family. I know that as they make their way in the world, I can be as confident of their patriotism and commitment to our great country as I am in my own.
My other twins, Trevor and Samantha, are too young to understand what we have been through but their unqualified love has been a tonic at the end of many long days. Their good humor is a direct reflection of their mother’s patience and unfailing good nature. Their only complaints have come when they occasionally bang on the television telling me to come out of the box, and when they ask when I am going to be finished with the book that has taken me away from park duty. I hope that when they read the book, they will agree that it was worth the time I spent in the basement writing and not rough-housing with them.
Finally, my wife Valerie’s most poignant reflection through all of this was when she told me that when she accepted my marriage proposal, she did not count on our years together being such a high profile whirlwind. Like me, she agrees that this is only a chapter in our otherwise rich life as a couple and family, one that has added to it, but hopefully one that will not define us indefinitely. We believe we still have much to contribute, as parents, as citizens, and perhaps as public servants. And we will do it together, for our relationship has been deepened, if that were possible, by the ordeal through which we have been tested. I hope that the story of our love also comes through in these pages.
I have tried to be as accurate as possible in chronicling these events. However, I am fallible, so there may be mistakes of fact. If so, those mistakes are my own.
Newspaper commentaries published by Ambassador Joseph Wilson before and after the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003
San Jose Mercury News, October 13, 2002
HOW SADDAM THINKS
By Joseph Wilson
PRESIDENT BUSH HAS made his preference clear: He wants Saddam Hussein’s scalp, or at least wants him r
un out of town—an approach that virtually ensures a bloody American invasion and long occupation of Iraq. And Congress late last week gave the president broad authority to launch that war, with or without United Nations involvement.
The U.N. Security Council, meanwhile, is pursuing a business-as-usual policy, reluctant to put any teeth into the possible resumption of weapons inspections until Saddam cheats yet again.
Both the U.S. and U.N. approaches are dangerously flawed. They ignore crucial lessons we learned in the Persian Gulf War about how Saddam thinks.
If history is any guide, “regime change” as a rationale for military action will ensure that Saddam will use every weapon in his arsenal to defend himself. You need look no further for evidence than his use of chemical weapons to repel Iranian invaders during the Iran-Iraq war. As the just-released CIA report suggests, when cornered, Saddam is very likely to fight dirty.
But history also shows that the less-confrontational approach favored by some on the Security Council—France and Russia—isn’t likely to work, either. Saddam has, after all, repeatedly flouted U.N. resolutions and ignored its demands to let weapons inspectors back into the country for almost four years.
Twelve years ago, I was in charge of the American Embassy in Baghdad. On Aug. 6, 1990, four days after the invasion of Kuwait, I met with Saddam for nearly two hours and listened to him gloat at the overthrow of the Kuwaiti government and threaten to “spill the blood of 10,000 American soldiers in the sands of the Arabian desert” should we counterattack. Over the next several months, my staff and I worked day and night to try to persuade him not just to leave Kuwait, but also to allow Americans in Kuwait and Iraq to go home and to release the hundreds of foreign hostages, including Americans, whom he had taken as “human shields.” The lessons we gleaned during that period are applicable to today’s looming conflict.
The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity Page 46