[1][2][3] In 2002, Plame wrote a memo to her superiors in which she expressed hesitation in recommending her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, to the CIA for a mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had arranged to purchase and import uranium from the country, but stated that he "may be in a position to assist".
In one of these op-eds published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson argues that, in the State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush misrepresented intelligence leading up to the invasion and thus misleadingly suggested that the Iraqi government sought uranium to manufacture nuclear weapons.
"[9] With regard to Wilson's findings, Tenet stated: "Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials.
In his column of July 14, 2003, entitled "Mission to Niger", Novak states that the choice to use Wilson "was made routinely at a low level without [CIA] Director George Tenet's knowledge."
As it turns out, the Court will not reach, and therefore expresses no views on, the merits of the constitutional and other tort claims asserted by plaintiffs based on defendants' alleged disclosures because the motions to dismiss will be granted ...
But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush Administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials.
"[45] Also in the additional views is the full text of an e-mail message sent by Plame on February 12, 2002, to the Directorate of Operations at CPD, in which she writes that Joe Wilson "may be in a position to assist" the CIA's inquiries into the Niger reports.
"[48] In "The CIA Leak", published on October 1, 2003, Novak describes how he had obtained the information for his July 14, 2003, column "Mission to Niger": I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment.
Journalistically, I thought it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilson – a former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Niger – on a fact-finding mission to Africa.
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.
[63] Michael Isikoff revealed portions of his new book titled 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.
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.
Libby was also alleged by prosecutors to have lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury in claiming that when he mentioned Plame's name to two reporters—Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, and Judith Miller, then of The New York Times—he was careful to point out to them he was simply repeating rumors that he had heard from Russert.
[94][95][96][97][98][99] According to court documents, by December 2004 Fitzgerald lacked evidence to prove Libby had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and was pursuing charges related to "perjury, false statements and the improper disclosure of national defense information.
According to court documents, the Probation Office states its opinion that the more serious sentencing standards should not apply to Libby since "the criminal offense would have to be established by a preponderance of the evidence, ... [and] the defendant was neither charged nor convicted of any crime involving the leaking of Ms. Plame's 'covert' status.
"[122] In January 2007, during the first week of Scooter Libby's trial, it was revealed in court proceedings that former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was granted immunity from prosecution by Patrick Fitzgerald in February 2004.
When the deal was struck, Fleischer told Fitzgerald that he had discussed Plame with David Gregory of NBC News and John Dickerson of Time in July 2003, days before leaving his job at the White House.
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.
"[153][154] According to Denver criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, a press-accredited blogger who attended the trial, "After Judith Miller's testimony, Libby lawyer Ted Wells told the judge he would be moving for a judgment of acquittal on a count pertaining to her.
[159] Walter Pincus, a Washington Post columnist, has reported that he was told in confidence by an unnamed Bush administration official on July 12, 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."
According to Fitzgerald: First, it was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute (Title 50, United States Code, Section 421) as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press.
'"[187] In an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times, Joe Wilson wrote "She immediately started jotting down a checklist of things she needed to do to limit the damage to people she knew and to projects she was working on.
"[188] On October 3, 2004, The Washington Post quotes a former diplomat predicting immediate 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.
"[189] 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.
"[191] Following Mitchell's appearance on Hardball, on October 29, 2005, 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."
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."
"[198] In March 2007, Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus reported, in The Washington Post, that Plame's work "included dealing with personnel as well as issues related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran.
"[201] In testifying before Congress, Valerie Wilson described the damage done by her exposure in the following way: The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers.
Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence.
It was July 21, 2003, barely a week since a column by Robert Novak in The Washington Post had named my wife, Valerie, as a CIA officer, and now the host of Hardball was calling to tell me that as far as the White House was concerned, they had declared open season on my family.