White House officials went after me and my wife, a CIA operative, after I questioned their claim that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons. Here's how they did it, and why it was so important to them.

Published May 2, 2004 in the San Jose Mercury News

By Joseph C. Wilson, IV

The Bush administration lied to get us into war, and it lied when it said the war in Iraq was part of the struggle against terrorism.

The invasion of Iraq may have been about other things: among them, the president's vision of bringing the ``Almighty's gift'' of freedom to the Middle East, at the barrel of a gun. But it was not about weapons of mass destruction, and it was not about terrorism. Not until we attacked and gave Al-Qaida the best recruitment tool it ever had.

Americans have been bombarded in recent weeks with overwhelming evidence that our government has bungled its way into the desert equivalent of a quagmire. Former administration loyalists Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke essentially said so, arguing that the White House was so focused on overthrowing Saddam Hussein that it pushed aside other priorities, including fighting Al-Qaida.

With the publication of my book Friday, I added my voice to that group. I believe ``The Politics of Truth'' will shine a light on leaders who refuse even to entertain information that could challenge their assumptions and keep them from making grave errors of judgment. Like invading Iraq.

The book includes the story of how the administration went after me -- and exposed my wife's career as a CIA operative -- because I blew the whistle on its claims that the United States knew Saddam was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program. Those claims were based, in good part, on reports that Iraq had sought to buy uranium yellowcake from the African country of Niger.

That charge made it into President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address in 16 words that the administration has since admitted should never have been uttered. I knew the Niger story was flat wrong because I was the man the CIA asked to check out the reports months earlier, in February 2002.

Tale of deception

The story behind those 16 words -- and how they made it into the critical speech laying out the imperative for war -- reveals an administration that deceives the American people, perhaps hoping that by the time the lies are uncovered, hardly anyone will be listening. The plan seems to be working. The administration had frequently intimated that Saddam Hussein had connections to Al-Qaida, although there was no credible evidence. Last month, a poll showed that a majority of Americans believe Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The most damning thing I learned while living through the swirl of rumors after the attack on my wife, Valerie Plame, and me was that the conspiracy to destroy us was most likely conceived -- and carried out -- within the office of the vice president of the United States. If true, this is especially shocking because revealing the name of a CIA operative is not only dangerous -- to her and her sources -- it also can be against the law.

Here's how my story unfolded and how I know the administration was well aware that the Niger claim was wrong before the State of the Union address.

For months before the president's speech, I had been publicly critical of the administration's increasingly loud drumbeat for war. I supported, instead, an aggressive disarmament policy backed by the threat of force. I had been the highest-ranking diplomat in Baghdad before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which I strongly supported. But now I was fearful that we would become occupiers in a country that loathes foreign rulers and that we would create legions of new terrorists in the process.

When I heard the State of the Union address, which talked about Iraq's attempting to buy uranium from Africa, I assumed the president was referring to one of the other African uranium producers. But then the State Department said he had been referring to Niger. In mid-March, just days before the war, I said in a TV interview with CNN that I believed the administration knew more about the Niger allegations than it was saying.

Smear campaign ordered

According to numerous journalists who have looked into the case, shortly after I made that statement, senior officials in the vice president's office ordered a ``work-up'' on me, to collect information that could be used in a smear campaign if it became necessary. Those and other sources tell me the person who probably directed that campaign is I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, the vice president's chief of staff and a leading neoconservative. I believe he is also quite possibly the person responsible for exposing my wife's identity. [The White House has denied this.]

What is most important about these revelations is that the vice president's office would have had no reason to attack me unless officials there knew I was telling the truth and could cast doubt on an allegation that was key to their case for war. You don't need to discredit someone whose story won't pan out.

It would not surprise me if Cheney's aides knew immediately that my statement spelled trouble. The vice president, after all, had been interested enough in the Niger claims a year earlier to ask the CIA about them. An agent told him they had nothing to support the claims. (We know this because Cheney has since said so to NBC's Tim Russert.) Wouldn't the 16 words in the State of the Union address have raised questions for him then?

You could argue, and some have, that the speech cited British intelligence. But if the last report Cheney had from our own agents was that there was no support for the claims, why would he blindly accept conflicting information? Wouldn't he double-check with our own intelligence agencies?

If he did, he would probably have discovered that the CIA had insisted that similar words be removed from another presidential speech four months earlier because it knew there was no intelligence to back up the claim. In fact, the British intelligence was the same that we had determined not to be true.

Quite simply, the administration knew the Niger story was bogus. The inclusion of the charge, and the reference to British intelligence to provide an alibi if the truth came out, was the product of a concerted effort to deceive Congress, the American people and the world.

Going public on Niger

After months of trying to get the administration to fess up on Niger by nudging reporters to investigate, I went public with what I knew. I wrote an article that appeared on the New York Times op-ed page on July 6, 2003. It said the president's claims about Niger were false, and that administration officials knew it because I had told them so.

Instead of acknowledging the deception, the White House stonewalled. On July 11, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, ``If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president or me.''

Within days of Rice's statement, her deputy, Stephen Hadley, was forced to admit that he had -- months before the State of the Union -- received two memos and a telephone call from CIA Director George Tenet himself warning that the evidence about the claim was weak. When questioned again by the media, Rice said: ``I either didn't see the memo, or I don't remember seeing the memo.''

By then, the administration had ``pulled the trigger'' on the plans made months earlier to discredit me.

As administration allies were disparaging my career and character in print and on television, two White House officials called six journalists, according to the Washington Post. (The officials were unnamed.) They offered up Valerie's name and profession, suggesting by innuendo that nepotism had played a role in the CIA's selecting me to travel -- pro bono -- to investigate the charge.

One journalist, Robert Novak, decided to publish the information in his nationally syndicated column.

I was not surprised the White House set its sights on me, since Karl Rove, the president's political consigliere, is a well-known practitioner of the politics of personal destruction. Rove has created an atmosphere in the White House and among allies that encourages ad hominem attacks. Ask Richard Clarke, who was accused of merely wanting to hawk his book when he accused the administration of not taking the Al-Qaida threat seriously enough.

In my case, Rove even confided to Chris Matthews, the host of MSNBC's ``Hardball,'' that ``Wilson's wife is fair game.'' There are laws that ban disclosing spies' names; there is no clause saying that only holds if the spies' spouses support the administration. Rove's attitude toward my wife was, bluntly, un-American.

I've often asked myself why the administration would be so vicious in its attacks on my family. Now that we know just how flimsy the justification for the war really was, it is clear to me that it knew that the Niger case could send its house of cards toppling.

The administration had justified military action on the threat posed by Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. While chemical and biological weapons are of great concern to terrorism experts, the doomsday weapon that terrifies most Americans is the atomic bomb.

The president's case on whether Saddam was trying to make that bomb rested on three pillars: that only the absence of fissile material stood between Saddam and a nuclear weapon; that aluminum tubes intercepted by American intelligence could be used in centrifuges to produce the fissile material from uranium yellowcake; and, of course, that Saddam was trying to get that yellowcake from Africa.

We now know that the aluminum tubes were not for centrifuges and that there was no attempt to buy yellowcake. Without yellowcake and centrifuges, you have no fissile material. Without fissile material, you have one fewer reason to wage war.

Lives changed forever

In the end, the administration's attack on me deflected American public opinion from the chilling reality that this war was waged on false pretenses. And it changed my family's lives forever. Our security is a real concern because of the bull's-eye put on Valerie's back by the White House, and her anonymity is forever lost.

But that's nothing compared to what the families of American soldiers have suffered in this war. Not to mention Iraqi families, who find themselves increasingly caught in the cross-fire in a conflict that never had to happen.

Is it any wonder that we find ourselves in a position as a lonely, feared and hated superpower, our military power at its peak, our political and moral authority at its nadir?

JOSEPH WILSON served 23 years in the Foreign Service, including as the acting ambassador in Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He later served as ambassador to two African countries under President George H.W. Bush. His book, ``The Politics of Truth,'' was published Friday. He wrote this article for Perspective.