Vallely 'outs' Wilson

on national television

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely on Fox News 'Hannity & Colmes' tonight

Calling it "a potentially explosive development in the CIA leak investigation," Fox News analysts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes grilled retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely tonight about his claim that Ambassador Joseph Wilson "outed" his wife as a CIA agent in 2002, a year before her identity was exposed by a political columnist.

"There's no personal vendetta here," Vallely told the pair, "I want to make that clear. It all came about questioning why the special prosecutor did not include in his inquiry bring under oath Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame or anybody in the CIA as far as we know, so the question is out there to be answered."

The interview on Fox News was the first time Vallely addressed the revelation on national television. A search of Lexis-Nexis newspaper archives reveals major media outlets including the Associated Press, Reuters, New York Times and Washington Post have not reported a single story about Wilson's alleged 2002 disclosure.

As WorldNetDaily first reported over the weekend, Vallely claimed Wilson revealed wife Valerie Plame's employment with the CIA to him in a casual conversation in the Fox News "green room" the year before she allegedly was "outed" by columnist Robert Novak.

"As we talked about our families, he did not say she was an agent, only that she was employed by the [Central Intelligence] Agency," Vallely reiterated on TV tonight.

Vallely's disclosure of Wilson's comments first came during ABC Radio's John Batchelor show last Thursday night, and once WND interviewed the general about his remarks, both Vallely and WND received demands for retraction and legal threats from attorney Christopher Wolf, who represents Wilson.

"WorldNetDaily and I both were absolutely a little shocked on Saturday evening when we got an e-mail from Joe Wilson's lawyers in Washington really asking us to 100 percent retract our statements that were made on the radio show," Vallely told Fox. "I'm not gonna back down on the fact we had a casual conversation. The fact is we were there together, we didn't agree on a lot of the things about the war, but we can agree to disagree."

When asked by Hannity if he knew if any other person was told by Wilson himself that his wife worked for the agency, Vallely responded, "I have friends back in Washington, D.C., [who] have told me that on the social circuit back there, the State Department, the social circles, also in CIA that it was very well known she worked for the agency. She was an analyst, not a covert agent."

Widely known?

At least two veteran reporters say Valerie Plame's association with the CIA was widely known, and a prominent analyst on military and political affairs, Victor Davis Hanson, told WorldNetDaily his own green-room encounter with Wilson revealed a man who is unusually free with personal information to strangers.

Valerie Plame appeared in Vanity Fair magazine with her husband Joseph Wilson in January 2004

Former Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey told the New York Sun in a story published Sunday. "[Plame's] name was knocking around in the sub rosa world we live in for a long time."

NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, in an appearance on CNBC's "Capitol Report," Oct. 3, 2003, was asked how widely it was known in Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

"It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger," she said.

Hanson, a Hoover Institution fellow and National Review columnist, told WND that like Vallely, he had a casual but unusually frank conversation with Wilson in the Fox News green room before appearing on the air with the ambassador some time, he believes, in early 2003.

But contrary to a report, Hanson said Wilson did not disclose his wife's CIA employment.

Nevertheless, Hanson found the first-time encounter to be revealing, describing Wilson as being very "indiscreet" and "unguarded" with personal information, rambling in a "stream of consciousness" manner.

"It was almost as if he were bored; he was non-stop talkative and sort of self-absorbed," Hanson said.

"When I left, I seemed to know a lot about Joe Wilson that he had spontaneously offered to a stranger."

While Wilson did not tell Hanson anything of his wife's CIA connection, Hanson was a witness to an intense 30-minute conversation between the ambassador and The Nation magazine Editor David Corn, who apparently were meeting for the first time.

Corn's July 16, 2003, column was the first published mention of Wilson's claim that the White House intentionally had "outed" Plame as retaliation for the Niger report.

Entitled "A White House Smear," Corn's column said, "Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad, the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.

Corn claims Wilson never confirmed whether his wife was a covert agent, yet he writes:

Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."

Corn concluded: "The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security."

(Note: To view the "Hannity & Colmes" segment, click here.)

Previous stories:

General wants Wilson apology

Joe Wilson fumes over Vallely charges in WND

Analyst says Wilson 'outed' wife in 2002

Cheney top aide indicted, resigns

Sealed indictments coming this week

Drafter of intel statute: Rove accusers ignorant

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