Letter from Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Rockefeller

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Ambassador Wilson sent the following letter today to the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Atta boy Joe!

Joseph C. Wilson, IV

Santa Fe, New Mexico

June 1, 2007

The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Chairman, Senate Select Committee On Intelligence
By Fax

Dear Senator Rockefeller:

I am dismayed that three Republican Senators (a minority of the minority) have again misused the occasion of the publication of an objective investigation by the whole Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of prewar Iraq intelligence to make erroneous assertions about issues unrelated to the Report and to attack improperly prior statements by my wife and me with essentially frivolous claims of purported inconsistency. The record demonstrates that no such inconsistencies exist and that partisan politics, not truth, is the basis for the “additional views” asserted by Senators Bond, Hatch and Burr (“Additional Views”). Moreover, with respect to the specific issue of who recommended my travel to Niger, the testimony of the Reports Officer in his interview in 2003(only just now released) plainly rebuts any possible basis for the Additional Views. That testimony states conclusively: “I (the Report’s Officer) recommended that he (Ambassador Wilson) should go.”

The Reports Officer also stated in 2003:

“I’d like to state emphatically that, from what I’ve seen, Val Wilson has been the consummate professional through all this. From the very start, whenever she mentioned to me and some others that her husband had experience and was willing to travel but that she would have to step away from the operation because she couldn’t be involved in the decision making to send him, in (his) debriefing, (in) dissem(inating) the report and those kinds of things, because it could appear as a conflict of interest.”

The State Department Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR) memo recounting the meeting of February 19, 2002, is clear that the issue of travel to Niger was not a foregone conclusion at the time of the meeting. In fact, I stated forcefully then that I saw no need for anybody to travel to Niger since there was in place a competent Ambassador and staff fully up to speed on uranium issues. I further made it clear in that meeting that if I were to be asked to go, I would have to clear any travel with the State Department and the Ambassador.

The core issue has never been anything the Wilsons have done. Instead, the issue has always been whether the administration misled the Congress and the American people about uranium yellowcake sales from Africa to Iraq. The answer to that question, extensively documented, is conclusive.

In sum, all of the evidence shows the Niger uranium story was never credible and the Administration knew it well before the 2003 State of the Union address. I believe this letter, on behalf of my wife and myself, addresses fully any issues requiring a response in the Additional Views, and also places in proper perspective the unfounded personal attacks in those Additional Views, which have no legitimate place in the Report.

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Wilson, IV

cc. Senator Kit Bond

Senator Orrin Hatch

Senator Richard Burr

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/letter_from_amb.html