Joe Wilson: Wife Divulged CIA Secret on 4th Date

Bush administration Uraniumgate accuser Joe Wilson defended his wife Valerie Plame on Sunday for blowing her CIA cover during what he described as "a heavy make-out session" shortly after the couple first met in the 1990s.

"Well, I had all the requisite security clearances and, in fact, there is some personal discretion that is allowed when you are in personal relationships," Wilson told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg.

Malzberg had asked about Wilson's admission to Vanity Fair in January that his wife revealed her CIA identity in a moment of heated passion on their third or fourth date.

The magazine reported:

"Meeting in Paris, London and Brussels, [the relationship between Plame and Wilson] got very serious, very quickly. On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a 'heavy make-out' session when she said she had something to tell him."

At that point Wilson told VF that his undercover enamorata interrupted their tryst and came clean.

"She was, she explained, undercover in the CIA," VF said. Wilson told the magazine that the revelation "did nothing to dampen my ardour. My only question was: Is your name really Valerie?"

The Bush accuser, whose new book, "The Politics of Truth," details his outrage over having his wife outed by the White House, was less forthcoming about a report claiming that as early as 1994 her cover had been blown, forcing the CIA to return her to the U.S.

"I won't talk about anything related to her career, other than to point out to you that the CIA tells Justice Department investigators that she's covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act," Wilson told Malzberg.

In October, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported: "The C.I.A. suspected that [master spy] Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994."

At the time, Kristof noted, Wilson's wife was brought home for safety reasons and "was already in transition away from undercover work to management."

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