Posted on 08/21/2006 9:27:44 PM PDT by crosslink
WASHINGTON — Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003, the same time the reporter has testified an administration official talked to him about CIA employee Valerie Plame.
Mr. Armitage's official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, show a one-hour meeting marked “private appointment” with Mr. Woodward on June 13, 2003.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has investigated whether Bush administration officials intentionally revealed Ms. Plame's identity as a one-time CIA covert operative to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the administration's march to war with Iraq.
When contacted at home Monday night, Mr. Woodward declined to discuss his meeting with Mr. Armitage or the identity of his source in the CIA leak case. Instead, he referred to his statement last year that he had a “casual and offhand” discussion about Ms. Plame with an unidentified administration official in mid-June 2003.
Related to this article Latest Comments Start a conversation on this story A person familiar with the information prosecutors have gathered, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because the material remains sealed, said Mr. Woodward's meeting with the confidential source was June 13, 2003.
The calendar released to the AP is the first confirmation that Mr. Woodward and Mr. Armitage met during the key time in the CIA leak case that was the focus of Mr. Fitzgerald's probe.
The identity of Mr. Woodward's source remains one of the big mysteries in the case because the Post reporter is the first member of the news media known to have discussed Ms. Plame's CIA employment with an administration official.
Mr. Woodward's former Post editor, Ben Bradlee, has speculated publicly that Mr. Armitage was the reporter's “likely source.”
And defense attorneys for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the lone administration official charged in the CIA leak case, also have suggested Mr. Armitage could have been Mr. Woodward's source when they unsuccessfully tried to persuade a court to order the release of State Department documents.
Mr. Fitzgerald's office declined comment Monday. Reached at his home in Virginia, Mr. Armitage said he could not discuss his cooperation with Mr. Fitzgerald's office, the meeting with Mr. Woodward or any details of the case.
Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, faces trial in January on charges he lied to authorities about conversations he had with reporters about Ms. Plame.
Mr. Libby's lawyer, William Jeffress, said Monday that Mr. Armitage's calendar only bolsters the defence's argument that information about the State Department official's role in the CIA leak affair should be released.
“I would hope that the facts on that would come out,” Mr. Jeffress said. “We have asked for information as to Mr. Woodward's source in discovery but that has been denied.”
Mr. Woodward's current boss, Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., said Monday, “We are not going to disclose the identity of a confidential source.”
Mr. Woodward has said he received a written release from his confidentiality obligation to the source and was even asked by his source to tell prosecutors about their conversation. But he has refused to publicly identify the person.
Mr. Woodward has said Ms. Plame came up incidentally during an interview he was conducting for a book he wrote on the Iraq war. He said the source told him that Ms. Plame was a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and no evidence has emerged in public that Mr. Woodward's source actually knew she had been a covert agent. Mr. Fitzgerald has signalled there are no plans — beyond the Libby indictment — to prosecute any other officials for releasing Ms. Plame's identity.
Mr. Armitage's calendar also shows that a week before Mr. Woodward's meeting with Mr. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state met for 15 minutes with Mr. Libby.
That meeting occurred as State officials were about to prepare a report outlining how Ms. Plame's husband was sent to Niger before the Iraq war to check unverified intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials from Africa.
Mr. Wilson reported back to the Bush administration that he was unable to verify the claim, but the administration continued to use the information to bolster its argument for war. Mr. Wilson has cited the decision to rely on the bad intelligence in his criticisms of the administration.
Two people familiar with the meeting, however, said the Libby-Armitage meeting dealt with issues involving Pakistan and said the subject of the CIA leak case wasn't raised. Both spoke only on condition of anonymity because some information about the meeting remains classified
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They're waisting their time on Armitage as he's already out of the administration. I wrote more in my blog http://peoplesmedia.blogspot.com/2006/08/where-is-armitage-now.html
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