Has Joe Wilson or anyone else ever revealed...

[HardWorkingDem]

the definitive answer to how he actually was sent to Niger?

I have never heard of the exact account. To me, it's not hard to imagine it was largely due to his credentials, but I'd really like to know how he did end up getting sent so I can shove it down the throats of my rethug co-workers.

[blm]

1. CIA officials wanted to send him and asked his wife to email them a list

of what else he had done, just for their own internal edification.

The GOP spun that email into saying she was pushing to send Wilson, when actually, the email was REQUESTED of her.

[kestrel91316]

2. Maybe it's classified??

[displacedtexan]

3. Google is your best friend, HardworkingDem.

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report.

The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001918.html

[peacetalksforall]

4. You can find interviews with Wilson on Air America and the Ed

Schultz Show.

The CIA needed to send someone.
Wilson's name came up.
CIA asked Mrs. Wilson about talking to him.
He went in for a meeting.
She escorted him into the meeting.introduced him, then left.

He was highly qualified.
There are four countries in Africa with the yellowcake recources.
He was Ambassador to one or two of them.
It's an Ambassador's job to know about the country and the people they are assigned to. He knew his way around and he knew the people.
He speaks fluent French - their language.
He was acting Ambassador whose job it was to be in contact with Hussein and try to talk him out of invading Kuwait.
Bush, Sr. praised and honored his work. He knew the Iraq side and the Africa side of the story.
Wilson said he doesn't claim to be a scientist, but knowing the commercial and trade side of the business of yellowcake does not require a science degree.

I paraphrased the above.

In one of the last interviews I listened to, he said that he met with the current Ambassador to Niger who had been involved in a thorough investigation of yellowcake trading and had come up with the same result - nothing. In other words, he seemed to be inferring that his trip was redundant, except that many people in government in Niger had changed - she knew the current ones, he knew others from the time of his assignment some of whom he was able to contact for extra thouroughness of results.

There should be plenty of stories and articles saying the same on the internet.

[donkeyotay]

5. That Wilson's trip was already a redundancy is an important point

The yellowcake bullshit got started in 2001. And, as higher class puts it:

In one of the last interviews I listened to, he said that he met with the current Ambassador to Niger who had been involved in a thorough investigation of yellowcake trading and had come up with the same result - nothing. In other words, he seemed to be inferring that his trip was redundant, except that many people in government in Niger had changed - she knew the current ones, he knew others from the time of his assignment some of whom he was able to contact for extra thouroughness of results.

When Wilson got sent in February 2002, it was because someone in Cheney's branch of the government was still insisting that it was good info. Wilson's trip was an independent and redundant verification that the info was bad.

Yet, it got back in AGAIN in fall of 2002. No one in the administration can remember how this happened yet again. All their f*ups are a complete mystery. They all get promoted, though, so we should assume the CIC thinks they're doing a bang-up job.

[Roland99]

6. Doesn't matter who sent him and why. That's a pure DISTRACTION from

the FACT that Plame's identity was leaked by this administration to the press.