leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday [August 29, 2006]. II: "Niger" in, "On or about July 10, 2003, LIBBY spoke to NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert to complain about press coverage of LIBBY by an MSNBC reporter. For his actions, he was called "a true American hero" by President George H. W. Wilson gave the phrase ‘corporate citizenship’ new meaning and it is a measure of his full, useful life that he will be missed not only by the business community in which his company became a giant, but also by the larger community where his compassion and service continue to be felt.”. It was a mad, misguided rush, one that I was upset about at the time, and soon after became involved with personally and professionally. 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." [65], On June 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. March 7, 2003: International Atomic Energy Agency announces that documents provided by U.S. about Niger-Iraq uranium claim are forgeries. [38] Libby was later granted a full pardon by President Trump.[39]. Wilson’s claim set in motion a chain of events that led to years of congressional and criminal investigations, sowed division and mistrust within the administration, and helped turn the public against the war. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. He ultimately concluded: "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. [66], Wilson's first marriage was to college friend Susan Otchis in 1974. “It was not done out of partisan motivation, despite how it was spun.”. Wilson met with the current US Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick (1999–2002) at the embassy and then interviewed dozens of officials who had been in the Niger government at the time of the supposed deal. Wilson responded on July 6, 2003, with an op-ed piece in The New York Times that bore the title, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” and which took direct aim at the Bush administration’s rationale for the Iraq War. Former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose then-wife Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent as apparent payback for his defiance of the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq War, died Friday. [20]. "[60], On July 20, 2007, Ms. Sloan and the Wilsons announced publicly that they had filed an appeal of the US District Court's decision to dismiss their lawsuit. "[31] Asked about this the following October, Wilson said that the official in question had declined the meeting, due to U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iraq, but speculated "maybe they might have wanted to talk about uranium". President Trump pardoned Libby in 2018. In July 2003, after Valerie Plame’s role as a CIA official was revealed in an infamous column by Robert Novak, I contacted Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame’s husband. According to Novak, "Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. deputy ambassador to Iraq, speaks to the Win Without War coalition on Jan. 31, 2003. 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." But in July 2003, Wilson revealed in a New York Times op-ed that the CIA had recruited him in 2002 to visit Niger, where he had once been posted, to check out claims that the Iraqis had sought to buy uranium in the 1990s; the CIA was seeking to answer questions from Vice President Dick Cheney. Former U.S. diplomat Joe Wilson, who disputed U.S. intelligence on Iraq that was used to justify going to war, has died of organ failure. In the last two paragraphs of his op-ed, Wilson related his perspective to the Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War: I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? 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. Wilson's father Joe was a Marine pilot in World War II and narrowly escaped death by taking off immediately before the bombing of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, in which 700 oth… After a two-year federal investigation of the disclosure, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, was convicted and given a 30-month sentence—not for revealing Plame’s identity but for lying to the FBI about his conversations with reporters. "[45], Wilson and his wife then amended their civil lawsuit (see below) to add Armitage as a defendant along with Vice President Dick Cheney and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. "It is with deep sadness that I learned of the passing of a true American hero — Ambassador Joe Wilson," Plame said in a statement. On July 6, 2003, in a Meet the Press interview with Andrea Mitchell, Wilson stated: "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. September 27, 2019 / 5:21 PM Former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose then-wife Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA agent after he defied the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq War, died Friday. [3][4] He was raised in a "proud Republican family" in which "there [was] a long tradition of politics and service to the farm" and for which "[p]olitics was a staple around the table".