To the editor:

Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent, last July wrote a column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that attacked the Bush administration for allegedly blowing Valerie Plame’s cover. Johnson concluded with these words: “At the end of the day, (Joe) Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush administration that pushed that lie.”

Since the indictment of Scooter Libby, many in the so-called mainstream media have repeated Johnson’s claim that Wilson was attacked because he exposed Bush’s lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). That claim is false. Wilson also believed Saddam had WMD.

In an October 2002 column, Wilson asked, “Can we disarm Saddam this time without risking a chemical attack or a broader regional war that threatens our allies?” In a February 2003 column, Wilson wrote, “There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him. And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that.”

As far as the Niger issue, the Washington Post in July 2004 reported that a bipartisan Senate panel “found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.”

Shortly after the Washington Post published that article, the Kerry-Edwards campaign delinked Wilson-related items (including “What I didn’t find in Africa”) on RestoreHonesty.com, a site launched to highlight Wilson’s charges against the Bush administration.

Kevin Groenhagen,

Lawrence