Reflections on Wikileaks, From a Man Who Knows How it Feels to be Outed

Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at It's A Free Country we bring you the unmissable quotes from political conversations on WNYC. On today's Brian Lehrer Show, Joe Wilson discussed diplomacy in the wake of WikiLeaks. Also, he talks about the film "Fair Game" in which he and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson are portrayed. She was outed as a CIA operative in 2003 by information leaked from the US State Department.

"Government should be transparent" is stated prominently on the White House website, yet if the reaction to the Wikileaks is any indication, politicians really prefer fogged windows. 

How big a deal is this latest trove of embarrassing State Department cables and documents remains to be seen, despite being front page news for days. Wilson, who has first hand knowledge of diplomats and spies, feels the reaction has been "sensationalist," particularly what's being made of diplomats collecting DNA samples, which he says is not common.

We always had a biographical reporting program, where reporting officers are supposed to gather personal details on people. Information is power. It's very important to understand where the person you're meeting with is coming from. Diplomats rotate out every couple of years, so if you don't have a biographical reporting program, then you basically have to reinvent the wheel every two or three years.

However, Wilson is worried that Wikileaks could have a negative impact on achieving U.S. Foreign Policy goals, because State Department employees and their sources may now temper their statements to each other if they're afraid their cover will be blown.

But on the upside:

As embarrassing as some of these more candid comments may be, it is now pretty clear the extent to which we have been working diplomatically, and have been engaging friends and allies around the world on critical questions ranging from Korea to Iran.

As for Julian Assange, the mind behind Wikileaks, a number of outraged politicians, including Mike Huckabee and Peter King, are calling for his assassination for leaking state secrets to the world. Wilson noted that King is singing a much different tune now than he did in the aftermath of Valerie Plame's outing.

He was one of the mouthpieces of the Republican right, that was out there trying to make this whole story about me rather than about their sixteen words, their lies to the American people. So I think Peter King is not credible as a spokesperson on this particular matter.

Throughout the whole debacle, Wilson said he tried to keep things in perspective.

Whatever damage they did to my family and myself is nothing compared what they've done to those who serve this country, particularly those who serve in uniform and have now been in two wars for the past decade.

As for the movie Fair Game, in which Wilson is played by none other than Sean Penn, he says he'd "give it five stars out of five."