Plame affair

The Plame Affair concerns the claim that Valerie E. Wilson (née Valerie Elise Plame; also known as "Valerie Plame") was working undercover with the CIA and that her identity as a covert agent was revealed by a government official. That claim led to a federal grand jury investigation involving national security issues, to an indictment of a federal official, to a civil suit, and to much related controversy, which is still ongoing.

Background

For a date-sequenced look at this issue, see the Plame affair timeline.

In the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush stated in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In late February of 2002, responding to inquiries from the Vice President's office and the Departments of State and Defense about the allegation that Iraq had attempted to buy enriched uranium yellowcake from Niger, the CIA had authorized a trip by Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate the possibility. He concluded then that there "was nothing to the story," and presented his report in March of 2002.

After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson wrote a series of editorials questioning the basis for such an action (See "Bibliography" in The Politics of Truth). In an editorial published in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson argues that, in his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush misrepresented intelligence leading up to the invasion and thus misleadingly suggested that the Iraqi regime sought uranium in order to manufacture nuclear weapons.

The Butler Report, the Iraq Intelligence Commission and the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at various times concluded that Wilson's claims were incorrect. Wilson later took strong exception to their conclusions in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth. Moreover, CIA Director George Tenet observed that "[while President Bush] had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound," because "[f]rom what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct - i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa," nevertheless "[t]hese 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President."

Eight days after Wilson's Op-Ed, columnist Robert Novak wrote about Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger and subsequent findings and described Wilson's wife as an "agency operative," suggesting that she had some role in his assignment. Subsequent press accounts reported that "White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment."

Wilson and others have argued that disclosure of his wife's classified identity as an "operative" of the CIA to Novak and/or other reporters is illegal; he argues that it was done purposely and intentionally to punish Wilson for his criticism and that it illegally endangers both Plame herself and others involved in national security. According to Stanley M. Moskowitz, CIA Director of Congressional Affairs, after an internal inquiry into the matter, the CIA made a referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for investigation of "possible violation of criminal law concerning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information." A Special counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, was appointed to lead the investigation.

In various filings, Fitzgerald contends that two Bush administration officials, Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told several reporters about Plame's employment at the CIA. Libby was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and grand jury. On June 13, 2006, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, released a statement saying that Fitzgerald had informed him Rove would not be charged with any wrong-doing On July 13, 2006, Joseph and Valerie Wilson filed a civil suit against Vice President Dick Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, top Presidential advisor Karl Rove and other unnamed senior White House officials, for their alleged roles in the public disclosure of her classified CIA employment.

Wilson said that his African diplomatic experience led to his selection for the mission to Niger. Ambassador Wilson, a retired diplomat and fluent in French, had served as a U.S. State Department general services officer in Niger, as an ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in both Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, and Iraq (taking over as Chief of Mission during the 1990-91 Gulf War), in other diplomatic postings, and in subsequent national security and military advisory roles concerning U.S.-African affairs under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Further information: Joseph C. Wilson § Diplomatic_career

After being consulted by her superiors at the CIA about whom to send on the mission, Valerie E. Wilson, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested Ambassador Wilson, her husband, whom she had married in 1998.

In their book ''Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (released on September 8, 2006), as Corn observes, Michael Isikoff and David Corn consider the "issue" of "whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there," presenting "new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."

After his identification by Corn and Isikoff in advance word of their book, Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, acknowledged that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, disclosed Mrs. Wilson's identity, Valerie Plame, as a CIA "operative".

Justice Department investigation

Main article: Plame affair criminal investigation

Main article: CIA leak grand jury investigation

This matter is currently under investigation by the Justice Department.

The redactions in a March 1, 2006 affidavit by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggest that he was aware then of the identity of Novak's original source. According to the affidavit,

Mr. Novak has published a brief description of how he learned the information, albeit declining to name his sources (REDACTED). Mr. Libby indisputably knows at least one of Mr. Novak’s sources:(REDACTED). Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that Rove told Libby that Novak was publishing a column about Wilson’s wife before it was ever published. . . . The one significant piece of information that Libby is not being told is the identity of (REDACTED) as a source for (REDACTED). Moreover, Libby has been given a redacted transcript of the conversation between Woodward and (REDACTED) and Novak has published an account briefly describing the conversation with his first confidential source (REDACTED).

In May 2006, it was widely reported that on September 29, 2003, the same day on which Novak made a statement on the Crossfire television program about the investigation, and three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation, Novak and Rove had a telephone converstation in which Novak told Rove he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation. According to the National Journal, "Rove testified to the grand jury that during his telephone call with Novak, the columnist said words to the effect: 'You are not going to get burned' and 'I don't give up my sources.'" When "asked during his grand jury appearance his reaction to the telephone call," the National Journal continues, "Rove characterized it as a 'curious conversation' and didn't know what to make of it."

On July 11, 2006, Robert Novak posted a column entitled "My Role in the Valerie Plame Leak Story":

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret.

Novak dispells rumors that he asserted his Fifth Amendment right and made a plea bargain, stating:

I have cooperated in the investigation.

Novak continues:

For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew -- independent of me -- the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. . . . In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part. Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America."</blockquote

Novak says that he did not reveal his primary source in the column because

My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.

Novak also states that Rove's and Harlow's recollections of their conversations with Novak about Plame differed from his.

Fitzgerald was aware early on of Richard Armitage's being the initial source of the leak. Said Armitage, "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request." (However, Armitage did not explain why, in the months before Fitzgerald was appointed Special Counsel in December 2003, Armitage did not reveal he was the source of the leak.) The Los Angeles Times speculates that "the information on Armitage ... along with court filings and interviews with former White House staffers and others familiar with the inquiry, suggest Fitzgerald pressed ahead because he learned quickly that Armitage was not alone in discussing Plame with reporters. Top White House officials had talked about her as well."

Robert Novak's column "Mission to Niger"

In his column of July 14, 2003, entitled "Mission to Niger," Robert Novak states that the choice to use Wilson "was made routinely at a low level without [CIA] Director George Tenet's knowledge." Novak goes on to identify Plame as Wilson's wife:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.

In "The CIA Leak," published on October 1, 2003, Novak describes how he had obtained the information for his July 14, 2003 column:

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.

Response to Novak's column "Mission to Niger"

The suggestion that naming Plame as an agent is a serious crime first appeared in an article by David Corn published by The Nation on July 16 2003, two days after Novak's column. Corn quotes Joe Wilson:

'Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.'

Supporters of White House officials argue that Wilson had initiated a partisan smear campaign against the Bush administration. They contend also that those White House officials who talked "on background" about Wilson were not punishing him by exposing his wife but trying to prevent journalists from reporting Wilson's "disinformation." Others counter this speculation by arguing that officials have a duty diligently to avoid exposing undercover officers or other confidential information and that, in any event, Plame's CIA status had little to do with any facts Wilson may or may not have uncovered.

Novak defends his column "Mission to Niger"

In his column of October 1, 2003, Novak states that he included the paragraph about Wilson's wife "because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission." He writes:

I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one ... During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife.

In that column Novak also claims to have learned Mrs. Wilson's maiden name "Valerie Plame" from his entry in Who's Who In America, though it was her CIA status rather than her maiden name which was a secret.

A day after the publication of the October 1st column, Novak announced on his TV program Crossfire on CNN [check accuracy] that although "Ms. Valerie E. Wilson" had donated $1,000 to the Gore campaign in 1999, according to the website Newsmeat, listing Brewster Jennings & Associates as her employer, he was "convinced" that "[t]here is no such firm." Novak argued further that "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover — they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."

Although Wilson writes that he was certain his findings were circulated within the CIA and conveyed (at least orally) to the office of the Vice President, nevertheless, on CNN, Novak also questioned the accuracy of Wilson's report and added that "it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it."

Although Tenet claimed not to have first-hand familiarity with Wilson's report, he stated that it "was given a normal and wide distribution" in intelligence circles but not to Congress or the Administration. Although the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report states that Wilson's report was actually viewed by the CIA as bolstering the belief that Iraq was trying to acquire "yellowcake" to reconstitute his nuclear WMD program, apparently the State Department remained skeptical of Wilson's findings.

Novak's initial column identified Plame as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He has since claimed that he originally believed Plame was merely an analyst at the CIA, not a covert operative, that he had used the term "operative" loosely, and that he had not intended it to identify Plame as an undercover agent: the term "operative" is "a word I have lavished on hack politicians for more than 40 years." Novak also said a CIA source told him unofficially that Plame had been "an analyst, not in covert operations."

Novak has claimed that when he approached the CIA's office of Public Affairs regarding his article on Plame, the office expressed no specific danger to anybody in case of the public disclosure of her name but warned strongly against it. But, according to Murray S. Waas in the American Prospect of February 12, 2004, the CIA source did warn Novak several times against the publication: two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name; according to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words ... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." Novak has also claimed that Plame's CIA employment was an "open secret" in Washington, indicating that effective "affirmative measures" to conceal her relationship to the CIA were not being taken, though this has been disputed.

Novak's critics argue that after decades as a Washington reporter, Novak was well aware of the difference and would be unlikely to make such a mistake. A search of the LexisNexis database for the terms "CIA operative" and "agency operative" showed Novak had accurately used the terms to describe covert CIA employees, every time they appear in his articles.

Novak's sources for his column "Mission to Niger"

In their article entitled "Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover, published in Newsday, on July 22, 2003, Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce report: "Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. 'I didn't dig it out, it was given to me,' he said. 'They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." In response, although Phelps stands by the report, Novak has argued that he was "badly misquoted." In September 2003, on CNN's Crossfire, Novak asserted: "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. There is no great crime here," adding that while he learned from two administration officials that Plame was a CIA employee, "They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators." In July 2005, it was revealed that Rove was Novak's second Bush administration source. Novak told Rove about Plame, using her maiden name, and Rove responded by saying "I heard that, too", or "Oh, you know about it." Through his personal attorney, Robert Luskin, Rove has stated that other media sources told him about Plame, although he's not sure which journalist first told him.

Novak's "primary source": Richard Armitage

After the indictment of Lewis Libby and the expiration of the term of the initial Grand Jury, Michael Isikoff revealed portions of his new book entitled Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, co-authored with David Corn, in the August 28, 2006 issue of Newsweek. Isikoff reports that then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had a central role in the Plame affair.

In Hubris Isikoff and Corn reveal – as both Armitage and syndicated columnist Robert Novak acknowledged publicly later – that Armitage was Novak's initial and primary source for Novak's July 2003 column that revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative and that after Novak revealed his primary source was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger," Armitage phoned Colin Powell that morning and was "in deep distress." Reportedly, Armitage told Powell: "I'm sure [Novak is] talking about me." In his Newseek article, Isikoff states:

The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA...[William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser] felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's source—possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more. Armitage's role thus remained that rarest of Washington phenomena: a hot secret that never leaked.

According to Isikoff, as based on his sources, Armitage told Bob Woodward Plame's identity three weeks before talking to Novak, and Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged because Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.

In an August 27 2006 appearance on Meet the Press, Novak was asked if indeed Armitage was his source of Mrs. Wilson's identity as a CIA operative. Novak responded by saying "I told Mr. Isikoff...that I do not identify my sources on any subject if they’re on a confidential basis until they identify themselves...I’m going to say one thing, though, I haven’t said before. And that is that I believe that the time has way passed for my source to identify himself."

On August 30 2006 the New York Times reports that the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage confirmed he was Novak's "initial and primary source" for Plame's identity. The New York Times also reports "Mr. Armitage cooperated voluntarily in the case, never hired a lawyer and testified several times to the grand jury, according to people who are familiar with his role and actions in the case. He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife’s computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said. But Mr. Armitage kept his actions secret, not even telling President Bush because the prosecutor asked him not to divulge it, the people said . . . Mr. Armitage had prepared a resignation letter, his associates said. But he stayed on the job because State Department officials advised that his sudden departure could lead to the disclosure of his role in the leak, the people aware of his actions said. . . . He resigned in November 2004, but remained a subject of the inquiry until [February 2006] when the prosecutor advised him in a letter that he would not be charged."

In an interview with CBS news on September 7 2006, Armitage admitted he was Novak's source. In the interview, he describes his conversation with Novak:

At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, "Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?" I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency, adding it was "just an offhand question. . . . I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had."

After acknowledging that he is Robert Novak's initial and primary source for the column outing Plame, Richard Armitage stated in an interview with CBS news that while the State Department memo that mentioned Valerie Wilson was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified. . . . I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government. . . . I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative. . . . I didn't try to out anybody." In a phone interview with The Washington Post, Armitage reiterated his claim, stating that in 40 years of reading classified materials "I have never seen in a memo . . . a covert agent's name."

According to the Washington Post, Armitage has attributed his not being charged in the investigation to his candor in speaking with investigators about his action; he said that he turned over his computers and never hired an attorney: "'I did not need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth.'"

Novak has disputed Armitage's claim that the disclosure was "inadvertent". In a column titled The real story behind the Armitage story, Novak states: "First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column . . . he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson's role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column -- implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information." Novak also disputes Armitage's claim that he learned he was Novak's source only after reading Novak's October 1 column: "I believed [Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage's close friend and political adviser] contacted me Oct. 1 because of news the weekend of Sept. 27-28 that the Justice Department was investigating the leak."

In a review of Corn's and Isikoff's book, Hubris, Novak writes: "I don't know precisely how Isikoff flushed out Armitage [as Novak's original source], but Hubris clearly points to two sources: Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage's political adviser, and William Taft IV, who was the State Department legal adviser when Armitage was deputy secretary."

Armitage has also acknowledged that he was Woodward's source. At the end of a lengthy interview conducted in the first week of September 2006, he described his June 2003 conversation with Woodward as an afterthought: "He said, 'Hey, what's the deal with Wilson?' and I said, 'I think his wife works out there.'"

Bush administration officials receiving subpoenaes to testify in Fitzgerald's Grand Jury Investigation

Lewis ("Scooter") Libby Jr.

A five-count indictment of "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, was issued on October 28, 2005. It is to date the only indictment issued by the Grand Jury. He resigned his post after his indictment.

The Grand Jury Investigation indictment of Libby states:

Beginning in or about January 2004, and continuing until the date of this indictment, Grand Jury 03-3 sitting in the District of Columbia conducted an investigation ("the Grand Jury Investigation") into possible violations of federal criminal laws, including: Title 50, United States Code, Section 421 (disclosure of the identity of covert intelligence personnel); and Title 18, United States Code, Sections 793 (improper disclosure of national defense information), 1001 (false statements), 1503 (obstruction of justice), and 1623 (perjury).
A major focus of the Grand Jury Investigation was to determine which government officials had disclosed to the media prior to Robert Novak's July 14, 2003 concerning the affiliation of Valerie Wilson with the CIA, and the nature, timing, extent, and purpose of such disclosures, as well as whether any official making such a disclosure did so knowing that the employment of Valerie Wilson by the CIA was classified information.

Further information: Lewis Libby

Further information: United States v. Libby

Karl Rove

On 2 July 2005, Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that his client spoke to Time reporter Matt Cooper "three or four days" before Plame's identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak. Cooper's article in Time, citing unnamed and anonymous "government officials," confirmed Plame to be a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Cooper's article appeared three days after Novak's column was published. Rove's lawyer asserted that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin also has said that his client did not initiate conversations with reporters about Plame and did not encourage reporters to write about her.

On July 11, 2006, Robert Novak confirmed that Rove was his second source for his article that revealed the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, the source who confirmed what Armitage had told him.

Rove has not been indicted as a result of Fitzgerald's Grand Jury Investigation.

Further information: Karl Rove § Plame affair

Other subpoenaed journalists informed that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative prior to July 14, 2003

In a January 23, 2006 letter to Scooter Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald wrote the following:

. . . [W]e advised you during the January 18 conference call that we were not aware of any reporters who knew prior to July 14, 2003, that Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson's wife, worked at the CIA, other than: Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, Bob Novak, Walter Pincus and Matthew Cooper.

Bob Woodward

On November 16, 2005, in an article entitled "Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago," published in The Washington Post, Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig reveal that Bob Woodward was told of Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation a month before it was reported in Robert Novak's column and before Wilson's July 6, 2003 editorial in the New York Times. Almost a year later it was revealed that the source of this information was Richard Armitage. and was later confirmed by Armitage [1]. Earlier it had been reported that the source was National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, but these reports proved to be false.

At an on-the-record dinner at a Harvard University Institute of Politics forum in December 2005, according to the Harvard Crimson, Woodward discussed the matter with fellow Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, responding to Bernstein’s claim that the release of Plame’s identity was a "calculated leak" by the Bush administration with "I know a lot about this, and you’re wrong." The Crimson also states that "when asked at the dinner whether his readers should worry that he has been 'manipulated' by the Bush administration, Woodward replied, 'I think you should worry. I mean, I worry.'"

Judith Miller

New York Times reporter Judith Miller also learned Plame's CIA affiliation from Scooter Libby, though she never published an article on the topic. Miller spent twelve weeks in jail when she was found in contempt of court for refusing to divulge the identity of her source to Fitzgerald's Grand Jury after he subpoenaed her testimony.

Walter Pincus

Walter Pincus, a Washington Post columnist, has reported that he was told in confidence by an unnamed Bush administration official on 12 July 2003, two days before Novak's column appeared, that

the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.

Because he did not believe it to be true, Pincus claims, he did not report the story in The Washington Post until October 12, 2003:

I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson. Because of that article, The Washington Post and I received subpoenas last summer from Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Matthew Cooper

Days after Novak's initial column appeared, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine published Plame's name citing unnamed government officials as sources. In his article, entitled "A War on Wilson?", Cooper raises the possibility that the White House has "declared war" on Wilson for speaking out against the Bush Administration. The names of Cooper's sources, later revealed as a result of Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation, are Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

Others claiming to have information about Plame's identity as a CIA operative prior to July 14, 2003

According to Patrick Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury Investigation indictment, in his sworn testimony, Libby claimed to have heard of Plame's CIA status from Tim Russert. Details pertaining to Libby's conversations with Miller, Cooper, and Russert appear in the five-count indictment charging him with lying and perjury to investigators and the Grand Jury.

In a story published in The New York Sun on July 6, 2005, staff reporter Josh Gerstein states that former Time magazine White House correspondent Hugh Sidey claimed in an interview that Plame's identity was widely known well before Mr. Cooper talked to his sources.

In the National Review Online of September 29, 2003, Clifford May writes:

On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative. That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

In an October 3, 2003 edition of the now-defunct program Capital Report on CNBC, Andrea Mitchell was quoted as having said:

It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that. But frankly I wasn't aware of her actual role at the CIA and the fact that she had a covert role involving weapons of mass destruction, not until Bob Novak wrote it.

In a November 2005 appearance with radio host Don Imus, however, Mitchell clarified that she had been misquoted:

I said that it was widely known that - here's the exact quote - I said that it was widely known that Wilson was an envoy and that his wife worked at the CIA. But I was talking about . . . I was talking about after the Novak column. And that was not clear. I may have misspoken in October 2003 in that interview. (Italics added.)

Legal issues relating to the Plame affair

There are some major legal issues surrounding the allegations of illegality by administration officials in the Plame affair, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and compelling the media to testify.

Main article: Plame affair legal questions

Possible consequences of the public disclosure of Plame's CIA identity

There has been debate over what, if any, damage has resulted from the public disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative in Novak's column and its fallout, how far and into what areas of national security and foreign intelligence that damage might extend, particularly vis-à-vis Plame's work with her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates.

On October 3, 2004 The Washington Post quotes a former diplomat predicting immmediate damage:

. . . [E]very foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. . . . That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name.

In contrast, in an October 27, 2005 appearance on Larry King Live, Bob Woodward commented:

They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that [former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment.

In an appearance the next night, October 28, 2005, on Hardball, Andrea Mitchell was quoted as saying:

I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.

Following Mitchell's appearance on Hardball, on October 29, 2006, The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer reported that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Linzer writes:

There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences –– the risk of anyone's life –– resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.

Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 reportedly told Linzer:

You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.

Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work:

You'll never get a straight answer [from the Agency] about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were.

Nevertheless, in a November 3, 2005 online live discussion, in response to a question about the Fitzgerald investigation, The Washington Post's Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist specializing in matters of national security, opined:

I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."

In a January 9, 2006 letter addressed to "Scooter" Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a discovery request by Libby's lawyers for both classified and unclassified documents. In the letter, Fitzgerald writes:

A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document. (Italics added).

He continues:

In any event, we would not view an assessment of the damage caused by the disclosure as relevant to the issue of whether or not Mr. Libby intentionally lied when he made the statements and gave the grand jury testimony which the grand jury alleged was false.

Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reports that three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told her that

While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.

According to her sources,

the damage assessment . . . called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt. . . . [and showed] "significant damage to operational equities."

Alexandrovna also reports that while Plame was undercover she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran, suggesting that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame also compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. These anonymous officials said that in their judgement, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of the compromise.

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on Hardball later, on May 1, 2006, that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks:

Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats.

More discussion of such controversial and still-often-disputed perspectives on the potential "damage" that may or may not have been done to Mrs. Wilson and national security may be found in:

Main article: Valerie Plame § Career

Other perspectives on the Plame affair

Main article: Alternate theories of the Plame affair

Since the Plame Affair became public knowledge, commentators began presenting multiple perspectives on it in various media. The neutrality and objectivity of such accounts have at times been disputed by reliable sources.

References

• Alexandrovna, Larisa."Interview: Ambassador Wilson, Husband of Outed CIA Agent, Sees Larger Administration Role in Leak." The Raw Story (blog) July 13, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• –––. "Judith Miller: Patron Saint of Propaganda." Huffington Post (blog) July 7 2005. (N.B.: Most comments following the entry are flagged as "abusive.")
• "AP falsely reported Wilson 'acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job' when her identity was first publicly leaked". Media Matters for America July 15, 2005.
• "A Bad Leak." The New York Times April 16, 2006, Editorial. Accessed November 18, 2006.
• Ballard, Tanya N., and Kevin Dumouchelle, comps. "Key Players in the Plame Affair." The Washington Post October 20, 2005. (Incl. link to "Timeline.") Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Q&A: "The CIA Leak Case." BBC News September 9, 2006. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Clemons, Steve. "Valerie Plame Leak Sabotaged America's Iran-Watching Intelligence Effort." The Washington Note (personal blog) February 13, 2006.
• Corn, David. "Toensing and WSJ: Corn Outed Plame (Here We Go Again)." DavidCorn.com (journalist's blog) September 15, 2006. Accessed November 18, 2006. (Reply to Toensing's editorial in The Wall Street Journal; linked therein.)
• –––. "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA." The Nation (web only) September 6, 2006. Accessed December 6, 2006.
• –––. "A White House Smear." The Nation July 16, 2003. Accessed November 18, 2006. (Also linked in above source.)
• De la Vega, Elizabeth. "The White House Criminal Conspiracy." Online posting. The Nation October 26, 2005. Issue of November 14, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Dickerson, John, and Viveca Novak. "Grand Jury Hears Plame Case in Front of a Grand Jury in the Investigation into Whether the Identity of CIA Operative Valerie Plame Was Improperly Leaked to the Press." Time January 22, 2004. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Gellman Barton, and Dafna Linzer. "A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic." The Washington Post April 9, 2006. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• "A Good Leak." The Washington Post April 9, 2006, Editorial: B6. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• "End of an Affair" Washington Post September 01, 2006
• Hayes, Stephen F. "The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons: The Chain of Events That Gave Rise to a Grand Jury Investigation." The Weekly Standard [11.6] October 24, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Hitchens, Christopher. "Fighting Words: A Wartime Lexicon: Wowie Zahawie: Sorry Everyone, But Iraq Did Go Uranium Shopping in Niger." Slate April 10, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Isikoff, Michael "Matt Cooper's Source." Newsweek July 18, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• –––, and David Corn. Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. New York: Crown, 2006 (Sept. 8). ISBN 0307346811.
• Johnston, David, and Richard W. Stevenson, with David E. Sanger. "Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer". New York Times July 15, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Johnston, David, Richard W. Stevenson, and Douglas Jehl. "Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report." The New York Times October 25, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006. (TimesSelect subscription required.)
• Kerber, Ross, and Bryan Bender. "Apparent CIA Front Didn't Offer Much Cover." Boston Globe October 10, 2003). Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Kincaid, Cliff. "Why Judith Miller Should Stay In Jail." Accuracy In Media July 11 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Leonnig, Carol D. "Papers Say Leak Probe Is Over." The Washington Post April 7 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Miller, Zell."Rule Can Head Off Dirty Tricks at CIA." Atlanta Journal-Constitution November 2, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Novak, Robert D.. "Bush's Enemy Within." TownHall.com (Syndicated column) July 10 2003. Accessed December 5, 2006.
• –––. "Who Said What Where When: The Rise and Fall of the Valerie Plame 'Scandal.'" The Weekly Standard October 16, 2006. Accessed December 5, 2006.
• Polity Media, Inc. "Valerie Plame's Campaign Contributions" from 1999 and 2004. Newsmeat.com. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• "Richard Armitage Admits to Name-Dropping Incident." LegalNews.TV September 9, 2006. (ClipSyndicate media link provided.) Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Scarborough, Rowan. The Flameout of the Plame Game." The Washington Times September 5, 2006. Accessed [November 17]], 2006.
• Smyth, Frank. "U.S. Sends the Wrong Message to the World." IFEX June 30, 2005 (posted July 1, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Spiegel International Online. "Was Berlusconi Behind the Pre-Iraq War Yellow Cake Story?" (English translation). Der Spiegel October 27, 2005. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• "White House Counsel Questioned in CIA Leak." Las Vegas Sun June 18, 2004.
• Toensing, Victoria. "The Plame Kerfuffle: What a Load of Armitage! What did Patrick Fitzgerald know, and when did he know it?". The Wall Street Journal September 15, 2006, Editorial. (See reply posted by Corn.)
• United Press International. "Ashcroft Recuses Himself from Plame Affair Case." UPI December 30, 2003. (Defunct link)
• United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Template:Pdflink On the U.S. Intelligence Community's Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, Together with Additional Views. July 9, 2004. Accessed December 5, 2006.

–––. "Senator Roberts' Statement on the Niger Documents." Press release. July 11, 2003. Accessed December 5, 2006.

• Ward, Vicki. "Double Exposure." Vanity Fair (Jan. 2004). Cached. Accessed November 17, 2006.
• Wilson, Joseph. The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. Paperback ed., 2005. ISBN 0786715510.

External links

• The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir, by Joseph Wilson: website featuring excerpts from the book, interviews, and reviews, a news archive, and hyperlinked "Bibliography" (Copyright © 2004, Carroll & Graf Publishers & Joseph Wilson).
• Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's official Web site.

See also

• CIA leak grand jury investigation
• Plame affair criminal investigation
• Plame affair legal questions
• Plame affair timeline
• United States Intelligence Community
• Yellowcake forgery