The interviews Valerie Plame and her “publicity-seeking, preening blowhard” husband do not want you to know about

Ernie Souchak, Editor-in-Chief

Former CIA attorney John Rizzo was correct when he called Valerie Plame's husband, Amb. Joe Wilson, a "publicity-seeking, preening blowhard".

However, we can tell you that there are at least two interviews that both Plame and her "publicity-seeking" husband do not want you to know about.

The first: In 2005 Valerie and Joe welcomed French film director Mathieu Verboud into their home to interview Wilson for the documentary Verboud was filming about FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds entitled "Kill The Messenger".

At the time, Wilson was presenting himself to the world as a proxy whistleblower of sorts for his wife. So when the opportunity arose for Wilson to go in front of the camera to claim that Plame was somehow a heroric figure just like Edmonds, he jumped at the chance.

According to Verboud, that's exactly what Wilson spent nearly 90 minutes doing. That is until he was caught off guard when Verboud began asking him questions about Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman's involvement in exposing his wife's cover, Brewster Jennings & Associates, as CIA.

That's when the interview came to a screeching stop and Wilson made it very clear to Verboud that he would not answer any question about Marc Grossman.

Wow. Talk about a "60 Minutes" moment. Wilson was clearly not expecting any questions about Grossman.

Remember, Edmonds had already been silenced by the Dept. of Justice under States Secrets Privilege Act., so Wilson thought no one knew about Grossman's involvement in the outing of his wife.

So Verboud now had Joe Wilson on film refusing to answer questions about the man Sibel Edmonds swore under oath had exposed Brewster Jennings & Associates and Valerie Plame as CIA back in 2001. And that man was none other than Wilson's friend and former college classmate Marc Grossman.

For a filmmaker making a documentary about FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, this was pure gold!

Clearly Verboud thought so as well - demonstrated by the fact that a short clip of the Wilson interview was included in the film's official trailer.

View Trailer: Kill The Messenger

The second interview that Plame and Wilson do not want you to know about is: Verboud's interview with Grossman himself for "Kill The Messenger".

In this interview, conducted in 2006 at an American Turkish Council event. Verboud asked Grossman a question about Valerie Plame and he pretended not to know who she was.

Even though he testified under oath during the Scooter Libby trial about his friendship with Wilson and enjoying breakfast at Joe and Valerie's house.

Here's Verboud in his own words:

Mathieu Verboud: Coming back to Grossman, exposing his role would have been interesting for the film, but the guy being what he is, there was no way that he would have given an interview if we had brought up any kind of charges. So we decided to just let him talk, give us his vision of Turkey...

Then we tested him - we asked him about Valerie Plame - and it was amazing to see his face change! He had the nerves to say that he didn’t know anything about Valerie Plame, or about Brewster Jennings - which is simply false! As mentioned earlier, his name had already appeared publicly in the Valerie Plame's case! Anyway, we didn't point out to that simple fact and fended off.

But Grossman was not finished lying on camera yet.

Verboud: Next, we just mentioned that there was this little woman of Turkish origin whose name was mentioned in an article in Vanity Fair speaking about FBI and Turkey… His face changed again, and he came up with this answer: "Vanity Fair? I am afraid it is not a magazine I read!" We then asked him directly about Sibel Edmonds and he said that he didn't know anything about her. Even the name was "unfamiliar".

Verboud must have been leading a charmed life to get such interviews on film. This is pure documentary filmmaking gold.

So, now the only question is why did Mathieu Verboud and co-direct Jean R. Viallet exclude this amazing footage of both interviews from their film?

Wilson appears in the trailer but not the film itself, and the film credits posted by IMDb list the Grossman interview as being "deleted" from the film. Repeat: "Deleted".

We know that Plamegate was a disinformation campaign. But what we would like to know is who applied the pressure to keep these two interviews out of the film?

To this day, both co-directors and Zadig Productions still refuse to release footage of either the Grossman or Wilson interviews.

And Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and their friend, Marc Grossman, while not denying these facts as stated, also refuse to answer any questions about the interviews.

Watch the full 82-minute final version of "Kill The Messenger" here:http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/5629