I just thought to check the career of Charles Wilson, the former State Dept. employee who went to Niger, couldn't find anything new, and publicly attacked the Bush Administration for not believing that he'd proved there were no Iraq-Niger contacts about uranium.

Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He was one of the principal architects of President Clinton's historic trip to Africa in March 1998.

Ambassador Wilson was the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces, Europe, 1995-1997. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. From 1988 to 1991, Ambassador Wilson served in Baghdad, Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy. During "Desert Shield" he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the negotiations that resulted in the release of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before the launching of "Desert Storm."

• I would think that the NSC employees are all political appointees. Also, the rest of the bio excerpted above notes that he worked in the offices of Al Gore and Tom Foley in 1985-86 as a Congressional Fellow. So the man was a Democrat.
• He held a high civil service post in Iraq, maybe the highest, at the time that the U.S. ambassador there blundered and made Saddam Hussein think that the U.S. wouldn't mind if he went into Kuwait. Ambassadors to important countries are usually political appointees, who rely on their civil servants to tell them what to do.
• Something very good happened while he was acting ambassador to Iraq: the hostage release.
• But his next jobs were as ambassador to two minor African countries with nasty climates. In fact, I may once have read that being ambassador to Sao Tome is one of two or three candidates for worst appointment in the State Department. It looks like punishment to me-- perhaps for blunders in Iraq?

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