Former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, who with outed CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a feted Washington couple after the launch of the Iraq war, died on Friday at the age of 69.
Wilson, who was U.S ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, famously questioned the intelligence used as the Bush administration’s justification for U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and Plame was later outed as a CIA agent — which she and Wilson claimed was in reprisal.
“It is with deep sadness that I learned of the passing of a true American hero — Ambassador Joe Wilson,” Plame, who divorced Wilson in 2017, said in a statement. “He had the heart of a lion and the courage to match.” The couple had twins Trevor and Samantha, now 20.
Plame, 56, and Wilson, were both committed liberals. They shot to fame in 2003 when Wilson wrote in the New York Times that he believed “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Wilson, a Democratic contributor who left the diplomatic service in 1998, endorsed John Kerry, President George W. Bush’s opponent, in the 2004 election.
Conservative Washington Post columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame’s identity in a 2003 column, attributing the information to “two senior administration officials.” Plame maintained that the leak was “payback” from the Bush administration for her Wilson’s article.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction of justice over the leak of Plame’s identity. It emerged that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage — a Cheney antagonist — was the primary source for Novak’s story, but Armitage was never charged. President Trump pardoned Libby in 2018, saying he was treated unfairly.
Plame and Wilson were vocal critics of the Iraq war and used their notoriety to secure lucrative book and movie deals. The glamorous couple were the subject of the 2010 movie Fair Game, which featured Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as Wilson.
They owned a sprawling two-acre estate in Santa Fe, which they unsuccessfully put on the market for $2.1 million in spring 2017. The 4,609-square-foot Pueblo style home featured 11 fireplaces, a separate guesthouse, and stunning views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Plame and Wilson first met in 1997 at a reception at the Turkish ambassador’s residence. At the time, Wilson was still married to his second wife, but by the next year he had divorced her and married Plame.
In 2007, she wrote about the strain the “outing” had put on her marriage. “It was so distorted, so twisted, and Joe was furious with me because he felt he had defended me gallantly, and I was not coming to his defense — although he understood that as an employee of the [Central Intelligence] Agency I could not speak publicly.
“It was just tearing us apart. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I felt the only thing that will save my marriage, is that goddamn it, I’m not going to let them have that too. We will get through this.”
In 2017, Plame was forced to apologize after sharing on Twitter an anti-Semitic article from the UNZ Review entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.” The article stated that Jews “own the media,” that they should wear labels while on national television, and that their beliefs were as dangerous as “a bottle of rat poison.”
Her initial response was: “First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don’t imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” But she later added: “OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest.”
She later apologized and resigned from the board of the Ploughshares Fund, which provides grants for projects aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. But in the space of three years, she had posted nine UNZ articles, including one titled “Why I Still Dislike Israel” and another about “Dancing Israelis” on 9/11.
Plame has been an outspoken critic of President Trump, launching a GoFundMe effort to buy a stake so she could ban Trump. It raised $89,719 toward its $1 billion goal. She has been active in Democratic politics since moving to Santa Fe in 2007. She hosted a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s super PAC in 2014 and another fundraiser for Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2015.
