A new life in Santa Fe after D.C. 'maelstrom'

SANTA FE, N.M. - In this liberal-leaning tourist town known for its handmade turquoise-and-silver jewelry, Joseph Wilson has just bought his wife something special in a downtown shop: a red-and-blue pin that reads: "I'm not anti-Bush. I'm pro-intelligence."

Wilson and his wife, outed CIA spy Valerie Plame Wilson, are finally getting a chance to unwind. They arrived three weeks ago at their new, 4,600-square-foot hilltop adobe home and have traded in their Jaguar for a pickup truck. Their 7-year-old twins already have found new friends and spotted three snakes.

There's a book deal in the works, a movie on the horizon, and a pending federal lawsuit that names Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove and others.

In an interview, Joseph Wilson said it would take a couple of years to sort through the remains of recent times, during which the couple were "dropped into the political maelstrom."

In July 2003, Wilson, a former ambassador, accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence on Iraq, and his wife's covert CIA identity was leaked to reporters. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted last month of lying to a grand jury and to FBI agents investigating the disclosure.

Perched on the windowsill of his downtown office, having offered the only chair in the otherwise empty room to a reporter, Joseph Wilson said: "What has changed is, as we look at all this, we look at it from Santa Fe, rather than downtown Washington. And that in and of itself is positive."

In Santa Fe, the weather's better. The traffic's better. It's not as hectic and all-consuming. Being a step removed provides a healthier perspective, he said.

"How nice to be able to think about things other than the daily grind of what people increasingly call 'the swamp' in Washington," the business consultant said. "I still have my BlackBerry. . . . Valerie's trying to wean me from that."

Joseph Wilson, 57, said he and Valerie Wilson, 43 - who declined to be interviewed for this article - always planned to leave Washington when she retired from the CIA; the events of the last few years speeded that up.

"We were not Washingtonians," he said, noting that much of his wife's career, and nearly all of his, was spent overseas. "We always thought about moving someplace where we could raise our kids. And we're not enchanted with the political game. We don't suffer - and never suffered - from what they call 'Potomac fever.' "

They were familiar with Santa Fe - Valerie Wilson, whose specialty was weapons of mass destruction, had visited during work trips to nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory - and they decided that the city offered ethnic and economic diversity, privacy, and an intellectual and cultural life in "a community that was extraordinarily welcoming," he said.

"There are always enough people around who want to talk about the fate of the nation," Wilson added, "so I don't worry too much about that."

That could well include New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Wilson, a career diplomat and self-described policy wonk, said he was fond of Richardson personally and professionally - both worked in the Clinton administration, when Richardson was U.N. ambassador - but had no plans to campaign for him.

Valerie Wilson's book, with a working title of Fair Game, is likely to be published in the fall, according to her husband.

The couple are consulting with screenwriters as Warner Bros. develops a film based on their lives.

But mostly, the Wilson family is just settling in.

Neither he nor his wife sees the events of the last four years as a final chapter. Instead, they look forward to giving that period "its proper place in our lives."

Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, likes to tell audiences that there was a time when the first line of his obituary would have read: "The last American diplomat to confront Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War." Now, he said, it would read: "The husband of the first American spy to have her identity betrayed by her own government."

He hopes to live long enough to see that line rewritten a third or fourth time. "Be nice to have it read . . . 'good father, good husband,' " he said.