White House Denies Leaking CIA Identity

The naming of the intelligence officer's identity by syndicated columnist Robert Novak came shortly after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, had undermined Bush's claim that Iraq (news - web sites) had tried to buy uranium in Africa.

Wilson has publicly blamed Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, for the leak, although Wilson did say Monday he did not know whether Rove personally was the source of Novak's information.

"He wasn't involved," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of Rove. "The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true."

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, has confirmed that the Justice Department has received a letter from CIA Director George Tenet to look into the matter. The department and the FBI (news - web sites) are trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full-blown criminal investigation is warranted, the official said.

Asked whether Bush should fire any official found to have leaked the information, McClellan said: "They should be pursued to the fullest extent by the Department of Justice (news - web sites). The president expects everyone in his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct — and that would not be."

Schumer, D-N.Y., said matter should be investigated from someone outside the Bush administration.

"If there was ever a case that demanded a special counsel, this is it," he said. "This is a very serious national security matter where there is a clear conflict of interest for the attorney general because it could involve high-level White House officials."

On Sunday, Bush national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said she was unaware of any White House involvement in the matter.

"I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate," she told "Fox News Sunday."

Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) also denied knowledge of the matter.

The flap began in January when Bush said in his State of the Union address that British intelligence officials had learned that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium in Africa.

In an opinion piece published in July by The New York Times, Wilson said he told the CIA long before Bush's address that the British reports were suspect and the administration has since said the assertion should not have been in Bush's speech.

A week after Wilson went public with his criticism Novak, quoting anonymous government sources, said Wilson's wife was a CIA operative working on the issue of weapons of mass destruction.

The Washington Post on Sunday quoted an unidentified senior administration official as saying two top White House officials called at least a half-dozen journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent could violate federal law.

"I know nothing about any such calls and I do know that the president of the United States would not expect his White House to behave in that way," Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Wilson said Monday he believes the White House leaked his wife's name "to intimidate others and to scare them and to keep them from coming forward and speaking."

Wilson had said in a late August speech in Seattle that he suspected senior Bush adviser Karl Rove. But on ABC's "Good Morning America" Monday, he backtracked somewhat from that assertion.

"In one speech I gave out in Seattle not too long ago, I mentioned the name Karl Rove," he said. "I think I was probably carried away by the spirit of the moment. I don't have any knowledge that Karl Rove himself was either the leaker or the authorizer of the leak. But I have great confidence that, at a minimum, he condoned it and certainly did nothing to shut it down."

Powell told ABC's "This Week" that he thought that if the CIA believed the identity of one of its covert employees have been revealed, it had an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into the matter. But he added: "Other than that, I don't know anything about the matter."

Rice said the matter has been referred to the Justice Department and "I think that's the appropriate place. ... Let's just see what the Justice Department does."

Pressed whether anyone at the White House raised concerns that the Wilson matter posed a problem for the administration, she replied: "I don't remember any such conversation."

Wilson said Monday that if the administration actually took an intelligence asset "off the table," that would have been "a dastardly deed ... coming from an administration that came to office promising to restore dignity and honor to the White House. It was contemptible."

The Novak article, quoted: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

It is either:

a) true, in which case somebody's head is going to roll and we would be fools if we did not demand a good head-rolling. or,

b) Not true, in which case somebody looks like a abject fool who doesn't have their facts straight, and they ought to still be drawn and quartered or tarred and feathered. or,

c) it is partially true, the operational word being "analyst" and not "operative". In which case, while nasty, such a revelation not as damaging to the interests of the United States.

Which of these do Freepers think happened? I believe it would be one of the three, or else someone else leaked a true allegation, but it was attributed to White House source(s).

Who didn't know?
Rush read this today. I yelled YES because in my limited experience CIA low level employees are known to family and friends.

September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.
Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"
I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
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 offhanded manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.
What did appear relevant could easily be found in what the CIA would call "open sources." For example, Mr. Wilson had long been a bitter critic of the current administration, writing in such left-wing publications as The Nation that under President Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness" and had "imperial ambitions."
What's more, he was affiliated with the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute and he had recently been the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."
Equally, important and also overlooked: Mr. Wilson had no apparent background or skill as an investigator. As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger. Based on those conversations, he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."
That's hardly the same as disproving what British intelligence believed — and continues to believe: that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to purchase uranium from somewhere in Africa. (Whether Saddam succeeded or not isn't the point; were Saddam attempting to make such purchases it would suggest that his nuclear-weapons-development program was active and ongoing.)
For some reason, this background and these questions have been consistently omitted in the Establishment media's reporting on Mr. Wilson and his charges.
There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?
Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.
It has to be seen as puzzling that the agency would deal with an inquiry from the White House on a sensitive national-security matter by sending a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat with no investigative experience. Or didn't the CIA bother to look into Mr. Wilson's background?
If that's what passes for tradecraft in Langley, we're in more trouble than any of us have realized.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200309291022.asp

This sounds odd.

Peach, the Justice Department [DOJ] in fact is the investigative agency of the Administration that would be charged with pursuing this matter. (Of course, in addition to Inspector General of Central Intelligence). In either of these cases, they are Administration investigations of itself. The true independent investigation would occur by a committee of the United States Congress, or perhaps an Indendent Counsel...and even then, no doubt that would be in the Congress a clear cut combination of blatantly partisan political intrigue and meshed with legitimate concern to establish the truth.

How many of us would be skeptical if Clinton ordered Janet Reno to do a check on something that went haywire in his Administration. Granted, those in high office now have much higher morals and their politics are in line with ours generally, but I am questionable about the inherent independent nature of such a self-conducted self-investigation.

If GWB finds out someone on his watch did this, they ought to be caned, Singapore-style on the spot.

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