http://www.sptimes.com/2003/08/10/Perspective/Blown_cover.shtmlBlown cover
Did the Bush administration identify a CIA operative because it was mad at her husband?
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 10, 2003
"I can be a tough son of a b--," former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson said last week.
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"I don't cower, I can't be intimidated . . . I faced down Saddam Hussein for seven months," said Wilson, a career foreign service officer and, in 1990, charge d'affaires for the first President Bush in Baghdad.
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Wilson will not confirm that his wife was or is a CIA operative, though Newsday has reported that a senior intelligence official confirmed it. Specifically, Plame was reported to be a Directorate of Operations undercover officer. (The New York Times reported Friday that Plame is "known to friends as an energy industry analyst.")
"But," Wilson said, "hypothetically, I will say that if what Novak asserts is true, then laws were broken. And if it's true, they (the administration) took off the board an important national security asset (Plame) in order to protect some yo-yo's political concerns."
He said he believes that political operatives in the White House gave his wife's name to Novak, and he thinks he knows who they are. But he's "not ready, yet" to name them. He hopes an investigation - by the FBI, Congress or both - will take care of that.