War critic retraces his steps to the spotlight

PROVIDENCE - Questioning President Bush's justification for the Iraq war "wasn't an act of great political and moral courage," former ambassador Joseph Wilson said last night.

The man who, in a 2003 newspaper opinion piece, wrote that the administration "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," cast that action as a simple act of civic involvement.

"It's what we do in a democracy," he said. "It's what makes this exercise in self-governance the greatest experiment in the history of the world."

Before a crowd of 600 at Brown University, Wilson retraced the chain of events that transformed him from a retired diplomat, unknown in popular culture, into a household name and author of a bestselling book, The Politics of Truth, scorned by the Bush administration's supporters and revered by its critics.

Taking a comfortable, almost casual tone and eliciting frequent laughter from the audience, Wilson recalled that late in 2001, after a 22-year career with the State Department including stints as acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq and ambassador to Gabon, he was enjoying retirement.

"My golf game was improving," he said. "I was able to afford a Jaguar convertible -- a used one.

"You may have seen it in Vanity Fair, with an attractive blonde in dark glasses and a Grace Kelly scarf," he continued, referring to the magazine spread for which he and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, posed after her employment with the Central Intelligence Agency became public knowledge.

Early in 2002, Wilson traveled to Niger to investigate a report that Iraq had attempted to buy 500 tons of uranium ore from the West African country's government, and that a memorandum of sale existed.

Wilson was sent not because of vicarious clout with the CIA, as his detractors have claimed. "I had served as ambassador to another French-speaking, uranium-producing country," he said, going on to cast himself as a trusted friend of officials in Niger, thanks to his role in crafting U.S.-Africa policy, and in nourishing Niger's fledgling democracy, late in his diplomatic career. After consulting with those officials, he concluded there was nothing to the report. If there had been, he said, "In a country that's been bankrupt since the 1960s, everybody would know about it, because everybody would want a piece of the revenue for their respective ministries."

Producing 500 extra tons of uranium would have represented a 35-percent increase in production, an increase that would have been apparent in increased quantities of workers, trucks and supplies, Wilson said.

So it came as a surprise, Wilson said, when President Bush said in the State of the Union address, on Jan. 28, 2003: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Wilson spent a few months fomenting behind the scenes to get the administration to recant those 16 words, then took it upon himself to write an opinion piece that ran in the New York Times. Titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," it ran July 6, 2003.

Within days, Time magazine and syndicated columnist Robert Novak published articles saying Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and cited administration officials as their source.

Before the intrigue began, Wilson said, he had hoped his obituary would read, "the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War."

"It now, of course, will read, 'the husband of the first American spy to have her identity compromised by her own government'," he said.

Wilson accused the Bush administration of "character assassination," of a degree "really unprecedented against somebody who is not running for political office."

To distract the public from questions about U.S. involvement in Iraq, the administration tried instead to focus attention on Wilson and his wife, and succeeded, Wilson said: When he asked whether anyone in the room knew the name of the person who wrote that sentence in the speech, or the person who cleared it, not a single hand went up. Wilson named both people in his speech: National Security Council nonproliferation expert Robert Joseph and Alan Foley of the CIA.

The other purpose of revealing Wilson's wife's identity, he said, was to send a message to others mulling public criticism: If you cross the Bush administration, "we will do to you what we just did to Joe Wilson's family," he said. "Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. That's what the message was."

Brown Hillel invited Wilson as a model for civic engagement. "Jewish tradition stresses the universal values of truth, justice, righteousness and living an ethical life," Brown junior Alexandra Trustman, major events coordinator for Brown Hillel, said when she introduced Wilson.

Wilson, too, encouraged listeners to follow his example, telling them, "A vibrant democracy depends on the vigilance of its citizens."

"We will not keep it if we do not participate," he said. "We will not keep it if the antics of Paris Hilton are more important to us than the antics of George W. Bush or John Kerry or anyone else. The public square, and participation in it, ought to be sacred."