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Valerie Plame is an American Central Intelligence Agency employee whose identification as a CIA "operative" by pundit-columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003 resulted in a Justice Department investigation into possible violation of U.S. criminal law regarding exposure of covert government agents. In March 2004, the independent counsel subpoenaed the telephone records from Air Force One, reviving the belief that the invesigation would result in a major political scandal.

Plame, the wife of retired Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was exposed by Novak as a CIA covert operative, who wrote, "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 allegation.

According to Novak, administration sources claimed that it had been at Plame's suggestion that the CIA sent her husband to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had attempted to illegally purchase uranium from that country. This appeared to contradict Wilson's claim that he was sent to Niger at the request of Vice President Cheney. Cheney had denied any knowledge of Wilson's Niger visit.

According to the September 27, 2003 edition of JustOneMinute (JOM), on July 16, 2003, David Corn "started this scandal" when he published the piece A White House Smear in The Nation, wherein:

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent.

Wilson charged that his wife's CIA association had been deliberately exposed by the White House in order to destroy her career, in retaliation for his public charge that the Bush administration had lied to the American people about U.S. intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In an article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson denounced the Bush administration, saying that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The exposure of covert government agents is considered a serious crime in the U.S., carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years, and the matter is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. Patrick Fitzgerald currently heads the investigation.

Corn had predicted that the investigation would die in the CIA - George J. Tenet would stay loyal to George W. Bush and quash this." JOM adds: "Evidently not. One guess - Mr. Tenet, pondering Bush's declining poll numbers and faced with in-house annoyance, decided to do the right thing. One presumes that, with Congress back in town, Mr. Tenet checked with his supporters on both sides of the aisle before proceeding."

Both Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall have made recent comments on the matter, according to JOM.

For obvious reasons, little is known of Plame's professional career. She described herself as an energy analyst for a private company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged to be a CIA front company. Her husband has compared her to actress Jennifer Garner, who plays a spy on television.

Plame met Wilson at a Washington party in early 1997. She was able to reveal her CIA role to him while they were dating because he held a high-level security clearance. The couple are the parents of three-year-old twins.

Novak's response

Novak claims that Plame was an analyst, not an operative, at the CIA—the difference being that analysts are not undercover, so exposing their identities is not a crime. This has been countered by several ex-CIA operatives who knew Plame giving interviews in which they claim she was an official undercover operative, or a NOC (no official cover) (c.f., Larry Johnston).

Novak has also attempted to defend his exposure of Plame by claiming that her CIA employment was an open secret in Washington —if true, Novak claims, this would contradict the claim that administration sources were revealing classified information.

Reverse timeline

• July 9, 2004 Joseph Wilson, who repeatedly claimed that his trip to Niger was not brought about by his wife Plame's suggestion, was the subject of a conclusion reached in the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee's Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq that the former diplomat was in fact selected to travel to Niger after his wife rehearsed to the CIA Wilson's specific qualifications in a memo. From the Washington Post:

"Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional."

• June 24 2004: President Bush is interviewed for more than an hour regarding the incident.

• June 3, 2004 President Bush announces he will hire attorney James E. Sharp if questioned by the investigation.

• 1 October 2003: Novak explains: "My role and the role of the Bush White House have been distorted and need explanation."

• 1 October 2003: "While Novak's decision to use Plame's name begs a journalism ethics debate, releasing her name to him or any reporter may well constitute a felony.... Sunday , The Washington Post said that White House officials had contacted six Washington reporters to disclose Plame's CIA identity."

• 1 October 2003: Wilson told Ted Koppel on Nightline that "Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was 'fair game'." Wilson "plans to give the names of the reporters to the FBI, which is conducting a full-blown investigation of the possible leak."

• 29 September 2003: "'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this,' Novak said, saying the information was disclosed to him while he was interviewing a senior Bush administration official.... Novak said the administration official told him in July that Wilson's trip was 'inspired by his wife,' and that the CIA confirmed her 'involvement in the mission for her husband.' ... 'They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else,' he said, adding that a source at the CIA told him Plame was 'an analyst -- not a covert operator and not in charge of undercover operators.'"

• 29 September 2003: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on Karl Rove: "He wasn't involved,... The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."

Comment from Message Board Entry: "Of course, the only way Shrub could know that Rove was not involved is if he already knows who was involved -- which would make him (at a minimum) an accessory after the fact."

• 26 August 2003: Wilson participated in a "public panel in Washington" on Thursday, August 21st, and is quoted as having said "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." See transcript of August 21st panel discussion.

• 8 August 2003: Days after Wilson "publicly voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program," Wilson says he became "a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.... Wilson's wife was identified by name as a covert C.I.A. operative in a column by the conservative columnist Robert Novak, a disclosure that Mr. Novak has attributed to senior administration officials."

• 30 July 2003: When pressed, Scott McClellan told reporters: “I’m saying no one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest there’s any truth to it.” ... To date, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called for investigations and any number of other senators have told reporters that some sort of inquiry is probably in order.

• 17 July 2003: "...some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

• 14 July 2003: "Mission to Niger" by Robert Novak: "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.... The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

• 12 July 2003: Press Gaggle with Ari Fleischer at The National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria: (Fleischer) "had previously obtained yellow cake from Africa. In fact, in one of the least known parts of this story, which is now, for the first time, public -- and you find this in Director Tenet's statement last night -- the official that -- lower-level official sent from the CIA to Niger to look into whether or not Saddam Hussein had sought yellow cake from Niger, Wilson, he -- and Director Tenet's statement last night states the same former official, Wilson, also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official, Wilson, meet an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. ... This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA. Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it, who never said anything about forged documents, reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."

• 6 July 2003: Wilson's Op-Ed article "What I Didn't Find in Africa" published in New York Times.

Reaction/Response to Plame "Leak"

• 30 September 2003: "White House Counsel's Memo on Leak Probe", New York Times: "Text of an e-mail to White House staff Tuesday from counsel Alberto R. Gonzalez about the Justice Department's investigation about the leak of a CIA officer's identity."

• 30 September 2003: "Remarks by President Bush to the Travel Pool After Meeting with Business People" in Chicago, IL:

"I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.

"And again I repeat, you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would.

"And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are."

• 30 September 2003: "Heads-Up-Gate" by Wyethwire bloggers: "The first rule of scandal is that the cover-up is worse than the crime. With that in mind, we ought to be looking to see if any effort was made to prevent the CIA from requesting a Justice Department investigation. And we ought to find out who warned the White House Counsel that something was up, so that Alberto Gonzalez could warn the White House staff in his now famous e-mail."

• 1 October 2003: "The CIA leak" by Robert Novak, Townhall.com.

• 1 October 2003: "Probe targets White House. Bush ordered his staff to cooperate as the Justice Dept. announced a full-scale inquiry into the CIA leak. Justice left open the possibility of a special counsel] by Ron Hutcheson and Shannon McCaffrey, Philadelphia Inquirer: "The developments raised the prospect of a full-blown White House scandal while Bush is sinking in job-approval polls, struggling to win international help in Iraq, and grappling with Congress over his request for $87 billion more in war-related spending."

• 1 October 2003: "Iraq puts Cheney in harsh spotlight. Role: His broad influence on White House policy makes the low-profile vice president a high-profile target for Democrats" by Susan Baer, SunSpot.net: "CIA Director George J. Tenet says Dick Cheney was not briefed on Wilson's conclusions. Nor has Cheney been tied to accusations that the White House punished Wilson for his role in forcing the retraction by blowing his wife's cover as a CIA operative."

• 1 October 2003: "Leak inquiry is a chink in Bush's moral armor" by Warren P. Strobel, Philadelphia Inquirer: "...revelation of a Justice Department criminal investigation into whether administration officials - believed to be at the White House - leaked the name of a CIA officer to get at a Bush opponent."

• 2 October 2003: "Investigating Leaks," Op-Ed New York Times: "Attorney General John Ashcroft has put himself and the president in a very dangerous position with his handling of the Justice Department's investigation into how Robert Novak got the name of a C.I.A. operative for publication in his syndicated column. After career lawyers conducted a preliminary investigation into the leaking of the officer's name, Mr. Ashcroft chose to proceed with a full investigation within the Justice Department. He did so despite department guidelines that would have permitted him to appoint an outsider, who would serve at Mr. Ashcroft's discretion but could make independent decisions. Instead, Mr. Ashcroft has decided to leave the investigation under the authority of the department's counterespionage office. That office employs career lawyers who routinely investigate this sort of leak and have the security clearances to do so with dispatch."

• 2 October 2003: "Attorney General Is Closely Linked to Inquiry Figures" by Elisabeth Bumiller and Eric Lichtblau, New York Times: "Deep political ties between top White House aides and Attorney General John Ashcroft have put him into a delicate position as the Justice Department begins a full investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer." Names of inquiry figures associated with Ashcroft are: Karl Rove and Jack Oliver.

• 2 October 2003: "FBI Narrowing List of CIA Leak Suspects" by Curt Anderson, AP.

• 2 October 2003: "FBI Creates Team to Investigate CIA Leaks", AP: "Overseeing the investigation is John Dion, a 30-year career prosecutor who has headed the counterespionage section at the Justice Department since 2002."

• 2 October 2003: "Outside Probe of Leaks Is Favored" by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen, Washington Post: "Confronted with little public support for the White House view that the investigation should be handled by the Justice Department, Bush aides began yesterday to adjust their response to the expanding probe. They reined in earlier, broad portrayals of innocence in favor of more technical arguments that it is possible the disclosure was made without knowledge that a covert operative was being exposed and therefore might not have been a crime.... At the same time, administration allies outside the White House stepped up a counteroffensive that seeks to discredit the administration's main accuser, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, whose wife was named as a CIA operative. Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie gave a string of television interviews with the three-part message that the Justice Department is investigating, that the White House is fully cooperating and that Wilson has a political agenda and has made 'rash statements'."

• 3 October 2003: "More vicious than Tricky Dick" by John Dean: "I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."

• "Regardless of whether or not a special prosecutor is selected, I believe that Ambassador Wilson and his wife -- like the DNC official once did -- should file a civil lawsuit, both to address the harm inflicted on them, and, equally important, to obtain the necessary tools (subpoena power and sworn testimony) to get to the bottom of this matter. This will not only enable them to make sure they don't merely become yesterday's news; it will give them some control over the situation."

• 10 October 2003: "Why the Federal Conspiracy and Fraud Statutes May Apply Here" by John Dean.

• 4 June 2004: "The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation" by John Dean.

External links

• JustOneMinute Timeline.
• Supoena for AF1 - hoo News
• Valerie Plame - Disinfopedia article
• White House Counsel Questioned in CIA Leak

Related Disinfopedia Resources

• Covert Agent Identity Protection Act
• unauthorized disclosure
• Unofficial Official Secrets Act
• White House Press Briefing July 22, 2003
• 1,_2003 White House Press Briefing Oct 1, 2003