New York, NY, April 25, 2005 --- In an exclusive interview with ePluribus Media published on DailyKos.com this morning, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV calls White House operatives “traitors to their country” and claims that their leaks — which “outed” Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA intelligence expert — comprised “an orchestrated conspiracy” that “continued throughout the summer of 2004, fueled by Republican staffers of the Senate Select committee on Intelligence, three Republican senators and their specious charges in a letter appended to the committee report, and a complicit (or lazy) Washington Post journalist named Susan Schmidt, who couldn't be bothered to even read the Senate report.”

Wilson, interviewed by ePluribus Media organizer Susan Gardner, said the “smear campaign” organized by White House operatives was intended “to discourage others from coming forward.”

Wilson made reference to a current article in The American Prospect about the federal grand jury investigation of the Plame outing: “The leaks reported in Murray Waas’ article suggest strongly that there was an administration-orchestrated campaign to discredit my report by compromising the identity of my wife,” Wilson said.

Wilson also said he does not expect Congress to get to the bottom of the scandal.

“So long as Republicans hold the chairmanships of the committees, there will be no congressional investigation, pure and simple. Even the Republicans in Congress are intimidated by the administration. And in refusing to investigate, they abrogate their constitutional responsibilities to provide oversight,” he said.

Wilson said of White House leakers: “…we have known for a long time that, like a lot of schoolyard bullies, they are cowards at heart. And in this case, traitors to their country.”

ePluribus Media’s exclusive interview is published here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/4/25/850/84929

Murray Waas’s article in The American Prospect is here:

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9588

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