Husband Is Conspicuous in Leak Case

Later, Wilson became prominent in the antiwar movement. In June 2005, he participated in a mock congressional hearing held by Democrats criticizing the war in Iraq. "We are having this discussion today because we failed to have it three years ago when we went to war," he said at the time. The next month, he joined Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a news conference on the two-year anniversary of the unmasking of Plame.

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymouslyin June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

That inaccuracy was not central to Wilson's claims about Niger, but his critics have used it to cast doubt on his veracity about more important questions, such as whether his wife recommended him for the 2002 trip, as administration officials charged in the conversations with reporters that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is now probing. Wilson has maintained that Plame was merely "a conduit," telling CNN last year that "her supervisors asked her to contact me."

But the Senate committee found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson "has good relations" with Niger officials who "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame "had the idea to dispatch him" to Niger.

The CIA has always said, however, that Plame's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip and she only relayed their decision.

Wilson also mistakenly assumed that his report would get more widespread notice in the administration than it apparently did. He wrote that he believed "a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president" had probably taken place, perhaps orally.

But this apparently never occurred. Former CIA director George J. Tenet has said that "we did not brief it to the president, vice president or other senior administration officials." Instead his report, without identifying Wilson as the source, was sent in a routine intelligence paper that had wide circulation in the White House and the rest of the intelligence community but had little impact because it supported other, earlier refutations of the Niger intelligence.

Wilson also had charged that his report on Niger clearly debunked the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases. He told NBC in 2004: "This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations." But the Senate committee said his findings were ambiguous. Tenet said Wilson's report "did not resolve" the matter.

On another item of dispute -- whether Vice President Cheney's office inspired the Wilson trip to Niger -- Wilson had said the CIA told him he was being sent to Niger so they could "provide a response to the vice president's office," which wanted more information on the report that Iraq was seeking uranium there. Tenet said the CIA's counterproliferation experts sent Wilson "on their own initiative."

Wilson said in a recent interview: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent."