Timeline of the Plame affair

The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium.

Between 2003 and 2007, Patrick Fitzgerald led a criminal investigation into allegations that the Bush administration had leaked Plame's identity as retribution against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, who had publicly questioned the rationale for the Iraq War.

In August 2006, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed that he had been Novak's primary source for the leak.

By July 2007, when President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence Scooter Libby had received for perjury and obstruction of justice during Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak, the scandal had largely come to a close.

As evidence that it is likely that no crime had been committed, the news agencies voluntarily filed a friend of the court brief in which they state on page 5:B.