Michael Barone issues a caution to anyone who would put any confidence in Joseph Wilson or any of the other witch-hunters who are afoot today seeking to throw Karl Rove on the flaming pyre:
In September 2003, Wilson said, "It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." He wrote a book called "The Politics of Truth," which got rave reviews from the mainstream press, and he became a foreign policy adviser to John Kerry's campaign.
But Wilson ... lied. His Times article said he had been sent by the CIA at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney. But Cheney denies he made any such request, and former CIA Director George Tenet said the trip was initiated inside the agency.
Wilson's article said George W. Bush lied in his 2003 State of the Union Address when he said that British intelligence reported that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa. But Wilson's mission covered only one country, and the British government has stood by its report.
Moreover, the report that Wilson sent the CIA said that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger in 1998, unsuccessfully; agency analysts concluded, not unreasonably, that this strengthened rather than weakened the case against Saddam.
Wilson denied repeatedly that his wife had played any part in his assignment to Niger. But the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a report subscribed to by members of both parties, said she had suggested his name.
In other words, Mr. Wilson is estranged from the truth and seems willing to say anything he deems necessary to hurt the Bush administration. Whatever testimony he might offer in the matter of his wife's status as a CIA agent and whether she was or was not deliberately outed is testimony which only a fool or a left-wing true believer could place any credence in.