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Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction .

She has described herself as an energy analyst for the private company Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged by the CIA as a front. It has been reported that this cover was not executed very convincingly.

Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson is her second husband. Plame met him 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. At the time Wilson was married to, but separated from, his second wife Jacqueline, a former French diplomat. Wilson and Plame are the parents of five-year old twins.

A July 11, 2003 e-mail from Cooper to his bureau chief indicated that Rove had told Cooper that it was Wilson's wife who authorized her husband's trip to Niger, mentioning that she "apparently" worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction issues. Newsweek reported that nothing in the Cooper e-mail suggested that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative. ([5])

In other interviews Novak confirmed that his sources warned him not to mention Plame. His motivation to disregard the warnings is suggested by this comment in "The CIA Leak:" "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment." Just four days before he revealed Plame's name Novak wrote, "Bush's Enemy Within." Therein Novak excoriates the Bush Administration's appointment of Frances Fragos Townsend to an important national security post explaining she could later betray Bush because two of her former superiors were liberal democrats and she had served in the US Attorney's office in Manhattan. According to Novak this office was "notoriously liberal laden."

"'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this,' Novak said on CNN, 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.'"

MALKIN HAS SOME GREAT STUFF AS WELL! She mentions how it was NY TIMES EDITORS THAT DEMANDED THE INVESTIGATION THAT LANDED THEIR REPORTER IN THE CAN.

WILSON AND HIS WIFE INTENTIONALLY LIED ABOUT A NATIONAL SECURITY REPORT. I WOULD CONSIDER THAT TO BE TREASON!

Check out the great stuff Malkin has..

http://www.michellemalkin.com/
STARK ROVE-ING MAD
By Michelle Malkin · July 11, 2005 07:32 AM
Bush-bashers have been in a tizzy all weekend over the latest Rove revelations. The Washington Post follows up; Pavlovian salivation ensues.

For a non-heavy-breathing perspective, read:

Betsy Newmark on the "scandalette."

Lorie Byrd at Polipundit on "Some Of The Worst 'Reporting' I Have Seen – And That’s Saying A Lot."

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute plays editor and notes:

Eventually, an enterprising reporter will ask Matt Cooper whether some of the sources he is shielding are other journalists; his answer may provoke a bit more head-scratching.
And the Power Line team weighs in. Paul Mirengoff writes:

The media feeding frenzy will, indeed, be massive. But absent a serious claim of a statutory violation or perjury, it's questionable whether anyone apart from liberal bloggers and other pre-existing Bush haters will partake in the media's dog food.
***

More...

Leon H. at RedState sums up:

So let's review - Wilson lied about how he got to Niger, he lied about seeing a report that didn't even exist at the time, he lied about the conclusions of his own report(!), he lied about what the administration had been told, and his wife, Valerie Plame, specifically sent him on a mission to intentionally debunk a claim, not to find facts or perform inspections. I'd say the WaPo's conclusion is pretty sound on this one.
Also, it certainly gives life to the question of why the heck these two lied so darn much in absence of a clear and compelling political agenda driving their every move. Let's not rush to make these partisan hacks into saints - they attempted to cook the books against the administration and got busted for being the compulsive liars that they are. In the course of attempting to discredit the ludicrously false claims, someone in the White House (presumably Rove) told the press that Wilson was sent to Niger on dubious premises in the first place (the recommendation of his wife), without giving the name of Wilson's wife, which Rove apparently did not know.

When this story first broke on the scene, I thought that Rove should properly be banished from the administration team, despite the fact that even at that time it was pretty clear that no crime took place. However, given the serial and politically motivated lies of Wilson and Plame, it's clear that the fairy tale the liberals have constructed in which Plame was the heroic CIA agent unjustly outed by Arch-Demon Karl Rove is totally and completely false - and I won't be shedding any more tears about either of their fates.

Regarding media coverage of Judith Miller's imprisonment, Tim Graham at The Corner calmly reminds:

Left out of almost all the media coverage of Judith Miller’s decision to go to jail rather than reveal sources to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is the way the New York Times editorialists pounded the table for the special-counsel probe that boomeranged on them...