Wilson, Joseph (Charles), (IV) 1949-

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WILSON, Joseph (Charles), (IV) 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born November 6, 1949, in Bridgeport, CT; son of Joseph Charles III and Phyllis (Finnell) Wilson; married Susan Dale Otchis, April 27, 1973 (divorced 1986); married Valerie Elise Plame, April 3, 1998; children: Sabrina Cecile, Joseph Charles, Trevor Rolph, Samantha Finnell Diana. Education: University of California at Santa Barbara, B.A., 1972.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Washington, DC. Office—Suite 300, 1717 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20006-4619. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 245 W. 17th St., 11th Floor, New York, NY 10011-5300. E-mail—joewilson@politicsoftruth.com.

CAREER:

Department of State, Washington, DC, foreign service officer, 1976-98, assignments included deputy chief of mission at American embassies in Bujumbura, Burundi, 1982-85, Brazzaville, Congo, 1986-88, and Baghdad, Iraq, 1988-91, political advisor to commander-in-chief of U.S. Armed Forces Europe, 1995-97, and special assistant to president and senior director for African affairs for the National Security Council, Washington, DC, 1997-98; J. C. Wilson International Ventures, Washington, DC, president, beginning 1998. Adjutant scholar, Middle East Institute, 2002.

MEMBER:

American Political Science Association, American Foreign Service Association, San Onofre Surfing Club.

AWARDS, HONORS:

William R. Rivkin award, American Foreign Service Association, 1987; Distinguished Alumni awards, University of California at Santa Barbara, 1991, 1995; Distinguished Defense Department Civilian award, 1997; Ron Ridenhour prize, Fertel Foundation/National Institute, 2003; American Patriot award, Americans for Informed Democracy, 2003; decorated commander, Order of the Equatorial Star (Gabon).

WRITINGS:

The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity, Carroll & Graf Publishers (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Joseph Wilson was a respected diplomat with over twenty years of service to the Department of State when in 2002 he was asked by U.S. federal agents to travel to Africa to investigate the possibility that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Wilson's trip proved to him that no such deal was in the making, and he wrote about his findings in a New York Times article. After the article appeared in the op-ed section of the newspaper in July of 2003, someone in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) leaked to the press the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was in fact an undercover CIA agent, thereby revealing her covert identity to the world.

Wilson maintains in his book The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies That Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity, that the Bush administration—specifically, such key figures as President Bush's senior advisor, Karl Rove, vice president Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff Lewis Libby, and national security aide Eliot Abrams—exposed this fact as a way to get back at Wilson for making President Bush, who had used Hussein's alleged nuclear arms programs as an excuse to go to war, appear to have been misleading the nation. Occurring amid controversy over U.S. military involvement in Iraq, and while the political season was heating up in preparation for the 2004 election, the leak stirred up a storm of media controversy and even became the subject of a criminal investigation.

The Politics of Truth also discusses at length Wilson's diplomatic career, including his time in Baghdad, Iraq, just before the Gulf War, when he had a dramatic confrontation with Hussein. The climax of the book involves the author's attacks on the Bush administration, which he believes to have been more concerned about politics than about the security of the United States.