In October 2003, Pincus cowrote a story for the "Washington Post" which described a July 12, 2003 conversation between an unnamed administration official and an unnamed "Washington Post" reporter. The official told the reporter that Iraq war critic Joe Wilson's wife Valerie Plame worked for the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) nonproliferation division, and suggested that Plame had recommended her husband to investigate reports that Iraq's government had tried to buy uranium in Niger.