From The New Republic, "Revisiting Wilson," 7-22-5.

"[A]ll of which obscures a broader, more important story--the story of how this administration misled the public in order to make a convincing case for war in Iraq.


Remember that it was the controversy over bad prewar intelligence that first thrust Plame--and her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson--into the public eye. In 2002, the CIA dispatched Wilson to substantiate claims that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, an allegation that would have substantially bolstered the administration's case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat. Wilson found no evidence of an Iraq-Niger connection, but the administration continued to cite the Niger story, most famously in the 2003 State of the Union, as evidence of Saddam's menace. After the war began, and no weapons of mass destruction turned up, Wilson started telling people that the Niger story had been bogus--first through leaks to reporters, then in a New York Times op-ed he wrote under his own name. As both the Los Angeles Times and Newsweek have reported, that's when administration officials looked into Wilson's background, discovered he was married to Plame, and publicized her CIA role. This, in turn, prompted Fitzgerald's investigation.