General wants Wilson apology

Threatened again with lawsuit over claim of 'outing' CIA wife

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.

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.

Wilson admits to two encounters with Vallely, the first in July 2002.

Fox News Channel would not provide information about Wilson's and Vallely's appearances, but WABC's Batchelor told WND his staff has found that Wilson appeared on the network at least 25 times from Aug. 13 to Dec. 31 of 2002 and that Vallely appeared from 150 to 200 times during that year.

At least two veteran reporters say Valerie Plame's association with the CIA was widely known, and a prominent analyst on military and political affairs, Victor Davis Hanson, told WorldNetDaily his own green-room encounter with Wilson revealed a man who is unusually free with personal information to strangers.

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.