Ex-Envoy Playing Politics, GOP Says

In recent days, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV has been portrayed as the victim at the center of a storm over allegations that the Bush administration revealed the identity of Wilson’s wife, a covert CIA operative, as punishment for his public criticism of the Iraq war.

But in the latest twist of this fast-moving story, Wilson found himself on the defensive Wednesday against charges from the White House’s top Republican allies that his motives are political.

“He is not an apolitical foreign policy analyst. He has a point of view,” Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said of Wilson in one of several TV appearances and interviews on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Gillespie said that Wilson had made appearances for the antiwar group MoveOn.org and had supported, both as an advisor and as a contributor, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Fearful that it would damage Wilson’s credibility, the House Democratic caucus canceled plans to hold a meeting and news conference with him on Wednesday morning.

“With Republicans calling him partisan, we really didn’t want to add fuel to the fire,” said one Democratic official who asked to remain unidentified.

A self-described former California “hippie surfer,” Wilson insisted Wednesday that “my goal has been only to try to ensure that this country is making wise decisions on matters of life and death.” But he also said that he would endorse Kerry for president -- if asked.

“Is it better for me to endorse him or slam him?” Wilson joked. “He’ll have to decide.”

A career Foreign Service officer, Wilson, 53, came to prominence as the last American diplomat to meet with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and then-President George H.W. Bush introduced him to his wartime Cabinet as “a true American hero.”

These days, the Republicans’ language about him is far less lustrous. Indeed, said a Kerry advisor who requested anonymity, the Republican effort to discredit Wilson is a sign that “this story has legs, and it’s got them worried.”

But the former diplomat’s willingness to publicly take on the administration, his open embrace of a Democratic challenger to Bush and his apparent relishing of the political storm breaking around him paint a picture of a complex man who, after a 22-year diplomatic career, has found himself at the center of two of the Bush White House’s biggest embarrassments.

On July 6, an article Wilson wrote for the New York Times opinion page challenged the suggestion in Bush’s State of the Union address that Hussein had sought uranium ore from Africa to build a nuclear bomb. A specialist on the region, Wilson had been asked by the CIA to go to Niger in 2002 to investigate the allegations, and he had submitted a report arguing that there was no basis for the claim.

Eight days later, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that the trip had been arranged by Wilson’s wife, a CIA employee, and he identified her by name. The statement that she had set up the trip was attributed to “two senior administration officials.”

It is a felony, punishable by fines and imprisonment, for a government employee to disclose the identity of a covert CIA operative and, at the request of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, the Justice Department opened a full-scale investigation of the incident this week.

In the weeks after his wife’s identity and employer were revealed, Wilson continued to press for answers about the disclosures. He told friends that if the White House thought he was about to go quietly, they didn’t understand him.

“They’ll do all they can to point out that I’m a flawed character,” Wilson said in an interview Wednesday, referring to White House officials. “But I’ve been fighting with these guys for months, and every time it ends up that what I’m saying is validated.”

He insisted that political partisanship was not his motivation for speaking out, and noted that he had discussed the situation in Iraq before both liberal and conservative audiences.

“I’ve got nothing against this president; I want him to succeed in this war against terrorism, as we all do,” he said. “I just wanted more discussion at a time when the neocon go-to-war juggernaut was the only voice being heard.”

Wilson also pointed out that he and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, had contributed to Bush’s campaign during the 2000 primaries. “I thought his ‘compassionate conservatism’ made him the most interesting candidate in the field,” Wilson said.

Federal Election Commission records show that Wilson has contributed to several candidates in both parties in recent years. In addition to Kerry and then-Gov. Bush, contributions went to Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), Rep. Edward R. Royce (R-Fullerton), former Vice President Al Gore and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Based on his early career in the Foreign Service, few might have predicted that Wilson would end up in the center of controversy. In his first 15 years as a diplomat, he moved between embassies in small and medium-sized African countries as an administrative officer who took care of such needs as plumbing and motor pools.

But he attracted the notice of his bosses, and in 1988, Assistant Secretary of State John H. Kelly recommended that he take over as deputy chief of mission, the No. 2 position, in the Baghdad embassy. As chance would have it, Ambassador April Glaspie departed on leave just before Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, leaving Wilson as the senior diplomat on the scene.

Wilson decided that firmness was the only way to deal with Hussein. When the dictator threatened to execute anyone who harbored foreigners, Wilson showed up for a news briefing with a noose tied around his neck -- to show that if execution was ahead, the proud Americans would provide their own rope.

“If you can’t laugh about it all, you’re going to go bonkers,” he now says.

“I’m not sure that would have been my style, but I’m loath to second-guess anybody who has to operate in that kind of stressful” situation, Kelly said. He described his protege as “a colorful guy” who stood out from more reserved diplomats and had even once dyed his hair blond.

And Kelly strongly defended Wilson, saying he had “done a good job under great stress.”

In 1992, the first President Bush appointed Wilson as one of the department’s youngest ambassadors, first to Gabon and then to Sao Tome and Principe. Wilson’s last post in the Foreign Service was as senior director for African affairs in President Clinton’s National Security Council. By the time of his retirement in 1998, he said, “I had decorations out the wazoo.”

Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs under Clinton, said Wilson stood out as a guy who wore expensive Hermes ties and drove a vintage Jaguar and loved the schmoozing aspects of serving abroad.

“He’s a bit flamboyant, and I consider that a compliment -- it’s refreshing compared to the average Foreign Service officer,” she said.

She said she considered him bright and competent and not at all political -- he was known, she said, for waxing nostalgic about his contacts with the elder Bush and his secretary of State, James A. Baker III.

Now a consultant on international business development, Wilson displays framed pictures of himself and Baker, the elder Bush, Gore and Clinton in his Washington office.

The son of a pair of freelance journalists, Wilson lived in Europe during his much of his youth, and decided to attend UC Santa Barbara on the basis of an article in Surfer magazine that promised he could surf near the school and still get a “B” average.

When he saw that, he said, the applications to the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics “went right into the circular file.”