Ambassador Wilson, The General Wants an Apology

The General is not about to be pushed around by the Vanity Fair Ambassador!

Today, in a twist of fate, General Paul Vallely is demanding that Ambassador Joeseph Wilson give him an apology for wrongly accusing him of slandering the general.

Threatened with a lawsuit for “slander,” retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely is turning the tables on Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, calling on the man at the center of the CIA leak controversy to offer a public apology for accusing him of lying.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Vallely claimed Wilson revealed wife Valerie Plame’s employment with the CIA to him in a casual conversation the year before she allegedly was “outed” by columnist Robert Novak.

Vallely said he brought up Wilson’s disclosure last week because he saw Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the alleged leak as unfinished.

Wilson, he said, has made so many misstatements of fact, “but nobody has taken him to task.”

Why Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald did not question Wilson and Plame under oath, “is a mystery to me,” Vallely said.

Meanwhile, Wilson’s lawyer Christopher Wolf notified Vallely and WorldNetDaily that his office mailed an official demand letter yesterday threatening a lawsuit unless the general retracts his claim.

Wolf warned Vallely “the claim that Ambassador Wilson revealed to you or anyone that his wife worked for the CIA is patently false, and subjects you and anyone publishing your statements to legal liability.”

But Vallely said Monday he still has no intention of backing down.

He first made the claim in an interview on the ABC radio network’s John Batchelor show Thursday night. Since speaking with WND late Friday, Vallely has clarified the number of occasions Wilson mentioned his wife’s status and when the conversation occurred.

After recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson, Vallely says now it was on just one occasion – the first of several conversations – that the ambassador revealed his wife’s employment with the CIA and that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002.

He is certain, he says, the conversation took place in 2002.

More accusations against the Wilsons:

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.

Yesterday, Ambassador Wilson had threatended the General, as was posted HERE.

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Reader Papa Ray sent more information on Joe Wilson’s other trip to Africa and the yellow cake that was found in Saddam’s Iraq that people seem to forget about:

Papa Ray sent me this odd bit of information on Joe Wilson from today’s edition of The American Thinker. Apparently, Joe Wilson was also sent to Africa back in 1999 by the CIA:

According to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Joseph A. Wilson IV made another trip to Niger, a trip also paid for by the CIA and for which he was chosen upon the recommendation of his wife, Valerie Plame. The SSCI gives no explanation for that trip…

There is much more on his trip at American Thinker.

Right Wing NutHouse has this on the uranium and Joe Wilson:

In 1999 when British intelligence found out through multiple sources that representatives of the Iraqi government had met with officials from the Niger government. This fact is not in dispute. The mystery is in what they talked about. A memo obtained by the British – later proven to be a forgery – purported to show the Iraqis were interested in purchasing 500 tons of yellow cake uranium from Niger’s mines. Forgery or not, since Niger’s exports are extremely limited, consisting largely of uranium ore, livestock, cowpeas, and onions, one doesn’t have to be an intelligence analyst to figure out which one of those items the Iraqis might be interested in.

Both the Butler Review and the Senate Select Committee on Pre War Iraq Intelligence (SSCI) point to other efforts by Saddam to purchase uranium, most notably from the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The Butler Review states in 2002 the CIA “agreed that there was evidence that [uranium from Africa] had been sought.” In the run-up to war in Iraq, the British Intelligence Services apparently believed that Iraq had been trying to obtain uranium from Africa; however, no evidence has been passed on to the IAEA apart from the forged documents.

And, here is more on Saddam’s yellow cake from news in 2003:

Experts from the U.N. atomic agency have accounted for tons of uranium feared looted from Iraq’s largest nuclear research facility, diplomats said Friday.

The natural and low-enriched uranium was secured at the Tuwaitha facility, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity. Tuwaitha was left unguarded after Iraqi troops fled the area on the eve of the war.

U.S. troops didn’t secure the area until April 7. In the meantime, looters from the surrounding villages stripped it of uranium storage barrels they later used to hold drinking water.

The diplomats did not detail how much uranium had been looted and where it was found, but it appeared much of it was on or near the site.

Although at least 20 percent of the containers which stored the uranium were taken from the site, it appeared that looters had dumped the uranium before taking the barrels.

U.S. military experts involved in the cleanup of the nuclear site found piles of uranium in the storerooms and purchased most of the looted barrels back from villagers for about $3 a barrel.

And, here is a forgotten story of discoveries of yellow cake that was found in Iraq after the invasion in 2003. This article from the Washington Post reports on two tons of the stuff brought back to the US in 2004:

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced yesterday that almost two tons of low-enriched uranium and about 1,000 radioactive samples used for research had been removed from Iraq’s Tuwaitha Nuclear Center and brought to the United States for security reasons.

The airlift of the radioactive materials was completed June 23, Abraham said in a statement, “to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.” Less sensitive radiological materials — used for medical, agricultural or industrial purposes — were left in Iraq, according to a Department of Energy statement.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which in the prewar period had kept the Tuwaitha uranium under seal, was told in advance of the U.S. removal, as were Iraqi officials.

Tuwaitha was once the center of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons effort, but its equipment was dismantled at the direction of U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s as part of the agreement following Iraq’s surrender in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The U.N. inspectors removed highly enriched uranium that could be used for weapons and shipped it for storage in Russia. The low-enriched uranium was placed under seal in storage at Tuwaitha but under the control of the IAEA.

Last week Joe Wilson was talking about filing suit against Karl Rove or Scooter Libby.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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Thanks for sharing!