Wilson's curious timing

Kevin Drum discusses a subject i raised a few days ago.

Here's the question: the first time that Wilson directly charged that the African uranium story was false — and that George Bush had known it when he delivered his State of the Union address — was in anonymous comments to Nick Kristof published on May 6. Why did he wait until then? And why did he wait until July 6 to talk openly about it (in an op-ed in the New York Times)?

After all, Bush had delivered the speech in January and Wilson had taken his trip to Niger the previous year. Why not go public right after the speech? Or why not in early March, when the forged Niger documents became public? In other words, why not go public with his concerns before the war instead of after?

Drum speculates that Wilson might have drawn courage from information given him by his wife about the results of CIA's analysis of the document and other African intelligence.

HT: Just One Minute