Plame affair
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The Plame affair, Plamegate or CIA leak scandal1 (rel. CIA leak grand jury investigation) are the common terms for an ongoing United States political scandal which has origins in the Iraq disarmament crisis of late 2002, and concerned the identification of Valerie Plame, wife of retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, as a CIA "operative on weapons of mass destruction" in a July 2003 column in the Washington Post by conservative pundit Robert Novak.
Novak's column[1] was published only eight days after the publication of a New York Times op-ed[2] written by Wilson, which was highly critical of the Bush administration's use of "unreliable" "yellowcake" documents as part of its rationale for the Iraq War. Wilson claims that Novak had conspired with Bush administration sources to expose his wife's identity as political retribution for his earlier criticism. Divulging the identity of an undercover CIA operative is, in some circumstances, a federal crime in the United States.
The Plame Affair includes the subsequent Special Counsel investigation by appointee Patrick Fitzgerald into the actions of Bush administration officials —including Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Ari Fleischer, U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney[3] and unknown others— regarding their knowledge of the leak of Plame's identity. In addition to Novak, six other journalists are reported to have known Plame's identity before the Novak column was published, including Judith Miller of The New York Times, who spent eighty-five days in jail for failing to divulge the identity of her confidential administration source to a grand jury.
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Background
Beginning in late 2002, and in the context of the "War on Terrorism" (a consequence of the September 11, 2001 attacks), the United States began an international campaign for stricter economic sanctions against Iraq because of questions about its capability to create weapons of mass destruction ("WMD"). The U.S. led the renewed sanctions effort as a response to what it said was Iraqi intransigence and refusal to allow thorough, randomly conducted weapons inspections; the U.S. demanded that international sanctions contain strict time requirements and a threat of hostile consequences for any non-compliance. After a UN Security Council resolution against Iraq was adopted, the U.S. insisted that it had a right to unilaterally enforce the will of the United Nations sanctions.
In the weeks before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. government officials publicly presented evidence and theory that, it claimed, suggested that the Iraqi government had a large supply of WMDs, such as chemical and biological weapons, as well as the capability to create more WMD, and further, was actively trying to produce nuclear weapons. Many critics of the United States's invasion of Iraq say that the series of sanctions and diplomatic maneuvers were not made in good faith; that the Bush administration had evidently decided to invade Iraq shortly after the September 11 attacks, and that the WMD "evidence" was only found (or produced) in order to provide a pretext for an invasion that was already a certainty.
Along with other reasons for war, the U.S. cited British intelligence that the Saddam Hussein regime attempted to acquire yellowcake uranium from Africa. It then became apparent that documents which appeared to depict an Iraqi purchase of yellowcake from Niger were fake. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador and the husband of Valerie Plame, claimed that he had investigated the "Yellowcake documents" and had, along with the CIA and British intelligence, confirmed them to be "unreliable". According to an article [4] by Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt , the documents in question were not even in US hands until eight months after Wilson's trip to Niger, and Wilson later told a Senate panel that he may have been confused about the matter.
Image:Patrick Fitzgerald 18380357.jpg After the invasion of Iraq, Wilson publicly criticized the Bush administration in a New York Times opinion column, for using documents known to be "unreliable" in making its case against Iraq. Eight days later, Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent was exposed in the regularly syndicated column of conservative political commentator Robert Novak, along with an allegation that Plame had a role in sending Wilson to investigate the Iraq-Niger "yellowcake" claim. The revelation of Plame's identity began a larger political scandal, and Wilson claimed that Karl Rove had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, his wife, as a CIA operative, in retaliation for his public contradiction of Bush administration claims. A subsequent special investigation was launched and placed under the direction of Patrick Fitzgerald, and numerous established and speculated connections to Bush administration officials have since surfaced. The leak may have been a violation of federal law — since revealing an agent's identity is a crime. On October 28 2005, the Grand Jury returned a 5-count indictment against Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. When the indictment was announced, Libby resigned his post.
Wilson's investigation and critical editorial
Events leading to this public revelation by Novak began with a 2002 mission undertaken by Wilson to the African nation of Niger. In February 2002, Wilson was tasked with investigating claims of attempted 1990s uranium ore purchases by Iraq from Niger. The investigation was called for by the CIA, with the purpose of investigating the veracity of the Italian "yellowcake documents" it had in its possession, but which had already largely been denounced as "falsified" or "unreliable." Upon his return, Wilson gave confidential reports that no yellowcake sale had taken place, which was corroborated by the U.S. Ambassador to Niger.
Wilson said that his African diplomatic experience led to his selection for the mission: he is a former ambassador to Gabon, another uranium-producing African nation, and was once posted in the 1970s to Niamey, Niger's capital.[5]
In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush cited the British intelligence's claims about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger, saying "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." A few British intelligence officers publicly dismissed these documents, although others in the British intelligence community to this day still stand behind the claim. Regardless, the claim was used in the official address.
Frustrated by the Bush administration's disregard for his findings and their continued citing of the yellowcake documents, Wilson wrote a critical opinion piece in The New York Times, published 6 July 2003,[6]. In it Wilson suggested that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence findings in order to bolster a pre-established agenda to invade Iraq, during the Iraq disarmament crisis that lead to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. On 11 July 2003, five days following the publication of Wilson's Op-Ed piece, the CIA issued a statement discrediting what it called "highly dubious" accounts of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger.[7] In the press release, CIA Director George Tenet said it should "never" have permitted the "16 words" relating to alleged Iraqi uranium purchases to be used in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, and called it a "mistake" that the CIA allowed such a reference in the speech Bush used to take the United States to war.
Eight days following Wilson's Times editorial, Novak published his column containing the information about Plame's identity. Wilson claimed that the leak was an act of political retribution against him, designed to destroy his wife's career. Yet for it to be a leak Plame would have to be covert, which she was not. If she was covert why did she donate money under her name [Valerie Plame] and using a known CIA front company? Why also did Wilson mention her in his op-ed and also have her in the photo with him in Vanity Fair?
Robert Novak article
In his July 14 2003 column, columnist Robert Novak wrote that the choice to use Wilson "was made routinely at a low level without [CIA] Director George Tenet's knowledge." Novak went on to identify Plame as Wilson's wife: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."[8]
Although Wilson wrote that he was certain his findings were circulated within the CIA and conveyed (at least orally) to the office of the Vice President, Novak questioned the accuracy of Wilson's report and added that "it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it." However, Tenet himself later indicated not only his familiarity with the report but that it "was given a normal and wide distribution" in intelligence circles[9].
Defenders of White House officials believe that Wilson, in a partisan way, initiated a smear campaign against the Bush administration. They promote the related view that those White House officials who talked on background about Wilson were, rather than trying to punish him by exposing his wife, trying to prevent reporters from believing Wilson's "disinformation". Opponents counter this argument by asserting that such officials would still have a duty to diligently avoid exposing undercover officers or other confidential information.
Claim of Plame Wilson conspiracy
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In the July 14 column, Novak claimed that Plame had a role in selecting Wilson, her husband, for his trip to Niger:
- Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report [concerning alleged Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium in Niger]. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me. [10]
Wilson had been open about the Central Intelligence Agency's sponsorship of his trip (which he called "discreet but not secret"), and wrote that he had been "informed by officials at the CIA that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report" relating to the sale of uranium yellowcake from Niger (see also Yellowcake Forgery).
Of his trip to Niger, Wilson wrote, "I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction [purchase of uranium ore] had ever taken place." Wilson also noted that U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbara Owens-Kirkpatrick "knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington."
However, a Senate intelligence committee report issued on July 9 2004 is taken by some to refute Wilson's claims about the extent of his wife's involvement in arranging the trip. As reported by the Washington Post:
- The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on 12 February 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said. [11]
Several high ranking CIA officials disputed this claim, however, and indicated that the operations official who made it was not present at the meeting where Wilson was chosen. Wilson wrote: "Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger's uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter."
Others argue that Wilson has said that his wife did not authorize the trip and that he cannot speak about the details. The Senate intelligence committee report and other sources seem to confirm that Valerie Plame gave her husband a positive recommendation. However, they also confirm that she did not personally authorize the trip, contrary to what Matt Cooper reports having been told by Karl Rove.
Some also suggest that, rather than debunking the Iraq-uranium-Niger theory, Wilson's report actually supported it. As reported by the Washington Post:
- Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
- Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq.
Wilson described the situation so, that one source told him, he avoided any talk about subjects, when he once met with an Iraqi official. And never understood what kind of commercial contact the official wanted. They met at a ministerial meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson, said (wrongly) that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."
Washington Post ran a correction to the quoted report:
- In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.[12]
Response to the article
Wilson charged that Plame's CIA status was deliberately exposed by Bush administration officials, as retaliation for his public charge that U.S. intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was largely a conspiracy to falsify and fabricate evidence to support the war. Wilson had denounced the Bush administration in a New York Times article on 6 July 2003, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." [13]
The Bush administration countered that they had only been trying to respond to Wilson's attempt to discredit them, by in return disputing several claims of his own. In particular, Wilson claimed that he had been sent to Niger at the request of the Office of the Vice President Dick Cheney; whereas, Cheney said he never heard of the whole mission to Niger before it happened. Defenders of the Bush administration say the only reason to mention Wilson's wife was to discredit this claim, and not to retaliate against Wilson in a personal way. The central issue of the whole Plame affair is whether the officials who disclosed this information about Wilson's wife a) even mentioned her name and b) knew about her "covert" status before doing so.
Novak defends himself
In a later column, Novak said he included this paragraph "because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission." He claimed:
- I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one...During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. [14]
Novak also suggested that Plame's relationship to Wilson could be assumed by reading his entry in Who's Who In America, though it was her CIA status rather than her marriage which was a secret. The following day on CNN, Novak announced that Plame's nominal employer was Brewster Jennings & Associates.[15] "There is no such firm, I'm convinced," Novak said, noting that "Ms. Valerie E. Wilson" had donated $1,000 to the Gore campaign in 1999 and had listed Brewster Jennings & Associates as her employer.[16] "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."[17] In fact, Brewster Jennings & Associates did exist, and proved to be an elaborately crafted CIA enterprise likely to have provided cover not only to Plame/Wilson but to other covert CIA operatives and contacts working abroad: subsequent articles in many publications [18][19][20][21] suggest that BJA, nominally an oil exploration firm, was in fact a CIA front company (now defunct) spying on Saudi and other interests across the Middle East.
Other than the use of the word "operative", there was nothing in the original article to suggest that Plame was engaged in covert activities. Novak later said a CIA source told him unofficially that Plame had been "an analyst, not in covert operations." The suggestion that Plame was a secret agent first appeared in an article by David Corn published by The Nation on July 16 2003, two days after Novak's column. [22] Of course, because Plame's official cover was that she was working for a private company, Novak's identification of her as an Agency operative compromised both Plame's cover and the cover of all of the other covert operatives associated with that company. Larry Johnson wrote, "Robert Novak’s compromise of Valerie caused even more damage. It subsequently led to scrutiny of her cover company. This not only compromised her 'cover' company but potentially every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company or with her."[23]
Novak indicated that he had used the term "operative" loosely, and had not intended it to identify Plame as an undercover agent. Novak's initial column identified Plame as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He has since claimed that he believed Plame was merely an analyst at the CIA, not a covert operative —the difference being that analysts are not undercover, so identifying them is not a crime.
Critics of Novak's defense argue that after decades as a Washington reporter, Novak was well aware of the difference and would be unlikely to make such a mistake. A search of the LexisNexis database for the terms "CIA operative" and "agency operative" showed Novak had correctly used the terms to describe covert CIA employees, every single time they appear in his articles, including the Plame article.
David Corn, in his July 16th, 2003 blog post that deconstructed Novak's terminology, was the first publication to use the terms "covert" or "undercover" in regard to Plame's status at the CIA. Corn indicated in that post and subsequent ones that he was speculating that Plame might have been "covert" based on Novak's use of the term "Agency operative", which typically is applied only to covert CIA employees. In any case, once Novak had revealed that Plame worked at the CIA the secret was blown and Corn was not revealing anything new.
Novak has also claimed that Plame's CIA employment was an "open secret" in Washington DC, indicating that effective "affirmative measures" to conceal her relationship to the CIA were not being taken. Several ex-CIA operatives who knew Plame have disputed this and indicated that she was at one time a NOC (nonofficial cover) covert operative. Larry Johnson has stated that Wilson "agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport [and if she had been] caught in that status she would have been executed." [24] Others counter that this was well in the past, and outside the time frame protected by the law forbidding disclosure of an undercover agent. Still others claim her cover was blown at least twice before the whole Plame affair: once by a foreign source and once by a goof-up at the CIA.
In "The CIA Leak", Novak stated this explanation for the two "senior administration officials" and the "CIA official" referenced in his June 14 article:
- During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
- At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission. [25]
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 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." [26]
On February 12, 2004, Murray S. Waas for the American Prospect wrote that two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name. According to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." [27] Novak has also stated on CNN's Crossfire that "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this." [28]
Others such as Nicholas Kristof[29] also argue that Ms. Plame's identity had already been compromised by the CIA double agent Aldrich Ames.
Responses of the Bush administration
President George W. Bush and his White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan have made several statements about the administration's response if anyone were found to have been involved in the leak:
- McClellan - September 29 2003: "The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." [30]
- Bush - September 30 2003: " And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. ... I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." [31]
- McClellan - October 7 2003: "Let me answer what the President has said. I speak for the President and I'll talk to you about what he wants." and "If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people in his administration to conduct their business." [32]
- Bush - June 10 2004 (Responding to a media question which asked "do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have . . . leaked [Valerie Plame's] name?"): "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts." [33]
Many people, including several former CIA officials who worked with Plame, as well as members of the press and politicians from both parties, pointing to the October 2003 and June 2004 statements, contend that the President has changed his position over time, from originally stating that he would fire anyone involved in the leak, to stating that only those who "committed a crime" would be fired. Members of the Bush Administration and some Republicans contend that the position has remained consistent — only those criminally responsible for the leak would be fired.
Novak's sources
In another series of leaks during July 2005, it was revealed that Karl Rove was Novak's second source [34]. Novak told Rove about Plame, using her maiden name. Through his personal attorney, Robert Luskin, Rove has stated that other media sources told him about Plame, although he's not sure which journalist first told him. Rove and his attorney do not dispute TIME Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's contemporaneous email and subsequent grand jury testimony, as related by Cooper himself, that Cooper first learned Plame's identity from Rove. The investigation potentially involves multiple leak sources other than those who spoke to Novak, yet Novak was the first to print reference to Wilson's wife.
It is still publicly unknown who was Novak's first source, whom Novak described as "not a partisan gunslinger".
Justice Department investigation
The matter is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation in December 2003. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald currently heads the investigation. Because the Justice Department is a part of the executive branch, some critics of the Bush Administration contend that the absence of rapid and effective action has been deliberate.
In March 2004, the Special Counsel subpoenaed the telephone records from Air Force One.
On April 7, 2005, the Washington Post reported that unnamed sources speculated Fitzgerald was not likely to seek an indictment for the alleged crime of knowingly exposing a covert officer (which prompted the inquiry), although he may possibly charge a government official with perjury for giving conflicting information to prosecutors during the investigation. [35]
Fitzgerald sought to compel Matt Cooper, a TIME Magazine correspondent who had covered the story, to disclose his sources to a grand jury. After losing all legal appeals up through the Supreme Court, TIME turned over Cooper's notes to the prosecutor. Cooper agreed to testify after receiving permission from his source, Karl Rove, to do so. Robert Luskin confirmed Rove was Cooper's source. A July 11, 2003 email 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 agency" on weapons of mass destruction issues. Newsweek reported that nothing in the Cooper email suggested that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative [36], although Cooper's TIME Magazine article describing his grand jury testimony noted that Rove said, "I've already said too much." Neither Newsweek nor TIME have released the complete Cooper email.
The leak to Newsweek, presumably from TIME Magazine, was the first major leak of investigative information. More attenuated leaks have followed, seemingly tailored to either include or absolve various officials and media personages. As of late July 2005, Fitzgerald's office has apparently not talked to the press. White House officials such as Press Secretary Scott McClellan and the President have not made any on-the-record comments concerning the investigation since Newsweek's e-mail scoop, although other Republican officials, particularly RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, are talking with the press.
Image:Lewis Libby.jpg New York Times reporter Judith Miller served a civil contempt jail sentence from early July 2005 to 29 September 2005, for refusing to testify to the grand jury. She was released upon reaching an agreement with Fitzgerald to testify at a hearing scheduled on the morning of September 30 2005.[37][38] Miller had previously indicated that, unlike Cooper's, her source has not sufficiently waived confidentiality. She issued a statement at a press conference after her release, stating that her source, Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, had released her from her promise of confidentiality.
Some commentators, most prominently Arianna Huffington, on her Huffington Post blog, have suggested that Miller may have been "grandstanding" in delaying her testimony to the grand jury. Others believe that Miller went to jail to land a million dollar book deal and to move attention from her questionable Iraq war reports.
On October 6 2005, Fitzgerald recalled, for the fourth time, Karl Rove to take the stand before the Grand Jury investigating the leak of Plame's identity. This is significant, according to major media sources, as previously Fitzgerald had indicated that the only remaining witnesses to call were Cooper and Miller before he would close his case. Reports have focused on this "last-minute" recall to testify, widely reporting that this is seen by other high-ranking government sources as "ominous" for senior officials in the Bush Administration. The Grand Jury is scheduled to end its term on October 28.[39][40][41]
Time line of Plame affair
CIA calls for Leak Investigation
On September 26 2003, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate the matter.[42] Karl Rove was identified by the New York Times in connection to the Plame leak on 2 October 2003, in an article that both highlighted Attorney General John Ashcroft's employment of Rove in three previous political campaigns, and pointed to Ashcroft's potential conflict of interest in investigating Rove. Ashcroft's subsequent recusal lead to the appointment of U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald as special prosecutor on 30 December 2003 (Comey names Fitzgerald). Fitzgerald began investigations into the leak working from White House telephone records turned over to the FBI in October 2003. [43]
Though Plame's exposure was claimed by Wilson to be retaliation for Wilson's editorial on issues surrounding the yellowcake forgery, the White House and the GOP have sought to discredit Wilson with a public relations campaign that claims Wilson has a partisan political agenda. However, Wilson along with current and former CIA officials have asserted the leak not only damaged Plame's career, but arguably endangered U.S. National Security and endangered the missions of other CIA agents working abroad under nonofficial cover (as "NOCs"), passing as private citizens without diplomatic passports. Plame, who worked undercover for the CIA for nearly 20 years,[44] was identified as an NOC by New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller (among others) on 5 October 2003.[45] Articles in The Washington Post,[46] The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications have pointed to Plame's association with Brewster Jennings & Associates, nominally an oil exploration firm, but in fact a CIA front company (now defunct) spying on Saudi and other interests across the Middle East. Disclosure of the identity of a covert agent is illegal under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, though the language of the statute raises the issue of whether Karl Rove is within the class of persons to whom the statute applies.[47] However, Title 18, United States Code, Section 641[48] prohibits theft (or conversion for one's own use) of government records and information for non-governmental purposes and was found to apply in the conviction of Jonathan Randel[49].
While the complete list of witnesses who have testified before the Grand Jury is not known (Fitzgerald has conducted his investigation with much more discretion than previous presidential investigations[50]), a number of individuals have acknowledged giving testimony, including White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Deputy Press Secretary Claire Buchan, former press secretary Ari Fleischer, former special advisor to the president Karen Hughes, former White House communications aide Adam Levine, former advisor to the Vice President Mary Matalin, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.[51] On 13 May 2005, citing "close followers of the case," The Washington Post reported that the length of the investigation, and the particular importance paid to the testimony of reporters, suggested that the counsel's role had expanded to include investigation of perjury charges against witnesses.[52] Other observers have suggested that the testimony of journalists was needed to show a pattern of intent by the leaker or leakers.[53]
Both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush have been interviewed by Fitzgerald, although not under oath. [54]
Legal filings by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald contain many pages blanked out for security reasons, leading some observers to speculate that Fitzgerald has pursued the extent to which national security was compromised by the actions of Rove and others. On 18 July 2005, The Economist reported that Valerie Plame had been dissuaded by the CIA from publishing her own account of her exposure, suggesting that such an article would itself be a breach of national security. The Economist also reported that "affirmative measures" by the CIA were being taken to protect Plame's identity at the time Karl Rove revealed her CIA affiliation to journalists. [55]
Contempt of Court: Miller, Cooper
New York Times investigative reporter Judith Miller, who met with Lewis Libby on July 8 2003, two days after Wilson's editorial was published, never wrote or reported a story on the Plame affair,[56] but nevertheless refused (with Cooper) to answer questions before a grand jury in 2004 pertaining to sources. Both reporters were held in contempt of court. On 27 June 2005, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to rule on the reporters' request for appeal, [57] Time magazine said it would surrender to Fitzgerald e-mail records and notes taken by Cooper. Miller and Cooper faced potential jail terms for failure to cooperate with the Special Counsel's investigations.[58] Columnist Robert Novak, who later admitted that the CIA attempted to dissuade him from revealing Plame's name in print, "appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor" (according to Newsweek)[59] and he has not been charged with contempt of court.
Miller was jailed on 7 July 2005, and remained there until September 29 when she agreed to testify in front of a grand jury after her source "voluntarily and personally released [her] from [her] promise of confidentiality." She was being held in Alexandria, VA in the same facility as Zacarias Moussaoui. In August 2005 the American Prospect magazine reported that Lewis Libby testified he had discussed Plame with Miller during a July 8 2003 meeting. Libby signed a general waiver allowing journalists to reveal their discussions with him on this matter, but American Prospect reports that Miller refused to honor this waiver on the grounds that she considered it coerced. Miller had said she would accept a specific individual waiver to testify, but contends Libby had not given her one until late September 2005. In contrast, Libby's lawyer has insisted that he had fully released Miller to testify all along.
Karl Rove
On September 29, 2003, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, regarding any suggested involvement of Rove with the leak, that "The President knows" that it was not true.
- And I said it is simply not true. So, I mean, it's public knowledge. I've said that it's not true. And I have spoken with Karl Rove ... He [President Bush]'s aware of what I've said, that there is simply no truth to that suggestion. And I have spoken with Karl about it.[60]
During the Republican National Convention, Rove told CNN:
- I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name. This is at the Justice Department. I'm confident that the U.S. Attorney, the prosecutor who's involved in looking at this is going to do a very thorough job of doing a very substantial and conclusive investigation.[61]
On 1 July 2005 Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, on the McLaughlin Group stated: "And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time Magazine's going to do with the grand jury." The document dump has since occurred.[62]
Image:Karl Rove.jpg On 2 July 2005, Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that his client spoke to Time reporter Matt Cooper "three or four days" before Plame's identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak. (Cooper's article in Time, citing unnamed and anonymous "government officials," confirmed Plame to be a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Cooper's article appeared three days after Novak's column was published.) Rove's lawyer, however, asserted that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." This second statement has since been called into question by an e-mail, written three days before Novak's column, in which Cooper indicated that Rove had told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. If Rove were aware that this was classified information at the time, then both disclaimers by his lawyer would be untrue. Furthermore, Luskin said that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" (three times, according to the Los Angeles Times of 3 July 2005 [63]) and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him and that Rove "has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else." Rove's lawyer declined to share with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff the nature or contents of his client's conversations with Cooper. [64] [65] [66][67] [68]
On 6 July 2005, Cooper agreed to testify, thus avoiding being held in contempt of court and sent to jail. Cooper said "I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions for not testifying," but told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance at court he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" an indication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep his source's identity secret. For some observers this called into question the allegations against Rove, who had signed a waiver months before permitting reporters to testify about their conversations with him (see above paragraph). [69]
Cooper, however, stated in court that he did not previously accept a general waiver to journalists signed by his source (whom he did not identify by name), because he had made a personal pledge of confidentiality to his source. The 'dramatic change' which allowed Cooper to testify was later revealed to be a phone conversation between lawyers for Cooper and his source confirming that the waiver signed two years earlier included conversations with Cooper. Citing a "person who has been officially briefed on the case," The New York Times identified Rove as the individual in question,[70] a fact later confirmed by Rove's own lawyer.[71] According to one of Cooper's lawyers, Cooper has previously testified before the grand jury regarding conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, after having received Libby's specific permission to testify.[72][73]
Rove's email to Hadley
In an email sent by Karl Rove to top White House security official Stephen Hadley immediately after his 11 July 2003 discussion with Matt Cooper (obtained by the Associated Press and published on 15 July 2005), Rove claimed that he tried to steer Cooper away from allegations Wilson was making about faulty Iraq intelligence. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove wrote to Hadley. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." Rove made no mention to Hadley in the e-mail of having leaked Plame's CIA identity, nor of having revealed classified information to a reporter, nor of having told the reporter that certain sensitive information would soon be declassified.[74] Although Rove wrote to Hadley (and perhaps testified) that the initial subject of his conversation with Cooper was welfare reform and that Cooper turned the conversation to Wilson and the Niger mission, Cooper disputed this suggestion in his grand jury testimony and subsequent statements: "I can't find any record of talking about [welfare reform] with him on July 11 [2003], and I don't recall doing so," Cooper said. [75][76]
Karl Rove revealed as one source of Time article
On 10 July 2005, Newsweek posted a story from its July 18 print edition which quoted one of the e-mails written by Time reporter Matt Cooper in the days following the publication of Wilson's Op-Ed piece.[77] Writing to Time bureau chief Michael Duffy on 11 July 2003, three days before Novak's column was published, Cooper recounted a two-minute conversation with Karl Rove "on double super secret background" in which Rove said that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip." In a Time article released 17 July 2005, Cooper says Rove ended his conversation by saying "I've already said too much." If true, this could indicate that Rove identified Wilson's wife as a CIA employee prior to Novak's column being published. Some believe that statements by Rove claiming he did not reveal her name would still be strictly accurate if he mentioned her only as 'Wilson's wife', although this distinction would likely have no bearing on the alleged illegality of the disclosure. The White House repeatedly denied that Rove had any involvement in the leaks. Whether Rove's statement to Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in fact violated any laws has not been resolved.
In addition, Rove told Cooper that CIA Director George Tenet did not authorize Wilson's trip to Niger, and that "not only the genesis of the trip [to Niger] is flawed an[d] suspect but so is the report" which Wilson made upon his return from Africa. Rove "implied strongly there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger," and in an apparent effort to discourage Cooper from taking the former ambassador's assertions seriously, gave Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Cooper recommended that his bureau chief assign a reporter to contact the CIA for further confirmation, and indicated that the tip should not be sourced to Rove or even to the White House. The Washington Post reported that the CIA, contradicting Rove, "maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counter-proliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999"[78], though she is reported to have suggested him for the 1999 trip[79].
Cooper testified before a grand jury on 13 July 2005, confirming that Rove was the source who told him Wilson's wife was an employee of the CIA.[80] In the 17 July 2005 Time magazine article detailing his grand jury testimony, Cooper wrote that Rove never used Plame's name nor indicated that she had covert status, although Rove did apparently convey that certain information relating to her was classified: "Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me."[81] Cooper also explained to the grand jury that the "double super secret background" under which Rove spoke to him was not an official White House or Time magazine source or security designation, but an allusion to the 1978 film Animal House, in which a college fraternity is placed under "double secret probation."[82]
On 13 August 2005 journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall. In addition, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, from whose prior campaigns Rove had been paid $746,000 in consulting fees, had been briefed on the contents of at least one of Rove's interviews with the FBI - raising concerns of a conflict of interest with the not-yet-recused Attorney General. [83]
Other journalists with early knowledge
Days after Novak's initial column appeared, several other journalists, notably Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, published Plame's name citing unnamed government officials as sources. In his article, titled "A War on Wilson?", Cooper raised the possibility that the White House had "declared war" on Wilson for speaking out against the Bush Administration.[84]
Both NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell and MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews have been mentioned in the press as having early knowledge of the Plame leak, although their conversations with (unnamed) White House officials may have taken place after Novak's article was published.[85] Matthews is reported to have told Wilson, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game."[86] Two Newsday reporters who also confirmed and expanded upon Novak's account, Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce, were also mentioned in October 2003 in connection to the investigation.[87]
Walter Pincus, a Washington Post columnist, has written that he was told in confidence by an (unnamed) Bush administration official on 12 July 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."[88] Because he did not believe it to be true, Pincus did not report the story.
Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News, and Glenn Kessler, a diplomatic reporter for the Washington Post, have both offered testimony in the ongoing investigation.[89]
Air Force One memo
In late July and early August, 2005, a great deal of attention began to be paid to a classified State Department memorandum which may have been the original source of the leaked suggestion regarding Plame, and may help to identify those who were in a position to have and therefore to leak Plame's identity.
According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the three page memo was originally dated June 10, 2003 and addressed to Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who had asked to be briefed on the history of opposition by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to the White House's position that Saddam Hussein was attempting to obtain uranium from Africa. It was a summary of the notes (included with the memo) taken by an unnamed senior analyst, of a meeting at the CIA on February 19, 2002 where Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger was discussed.
The memo mainly shows that the State Department had already decided on the basis of other evidence, detailed in the memo, that Iraq was not in fact seeking to acquire uranium from Niger, and therefore opposed Wilson's trip as unnecessary. However, two sentences of background information in the second paragraph mention Wilson's wife, identifying her as "Valerie Wilson", and speculate that it was she "who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue". Although she is not explicitly identified as a covert agent, the paragraph naming her was marked with an (S) [90], the prescribed way to indicate in a U.S. classified document that a paragraph is classified at the "secret" level. [91] Anyone with a U.S. security clearance is expected to be familiar with this notation. This could make leaking her identity based on this document a federal crime under several statutes, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.
According to the Post, on July 6, 2003, shortly after Wilson had written in the New York Times and the Post and appeared on Meet the Press criticizing the Bush administration's statements regarding Saddam's attempts to acquire yellowcake, Secretary of State Colin Powell had asked Carl W. Ford Jr., at that time director of INR, to explain Wilson's statements. Ford readdressed the memo to Powell, who received it on July 7, 2003 as he was about to leave for Africa aboard Air Force One with President Bush, White House senior adviser Dan Bartlett, then White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and others. The memo was passed around on the plane and discussed. The Post's sources report that Ford described the details of the memo in 2004 for the grand jury investigating the leak.
One week later, on July 14, 2003, Robert Novak stated in his column that it was Plame's idea to send Wilson to Niger, in the process exposing her as a CIA agent, which launched the controversy and eventually an investigation regarding the source of the information. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, who received the leak later than Novak, stated that it was given to him by Karl Rove and confirmed by Lewis "Scooter" Libby. According to Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, Rove has stated that he had not seen the memo until it was given to him by prosecutors investigating the leak, and that he learned of Plame from Novak. Novak has written that he got his information from "another journalist", unnamed, and that for confirmation of Plame's role he called two administration officials as well as CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, who advised him not to mention Plame by name; but he dismissed Harlow's advice because "once it was determined that Wilson's wife suggested the mission, she could be identified as 'Valerie Plame' by reading her husband's entry in 'Who's Who in America.' "
Pincus' description of the contents of the memo was cited as support by those who believe that someone in the administration's inner circle was responsible for the leak[92], [93], who state that, to date, it is the only known document even tentatively linking Plame to the suggestion that Wilson be sent to Niger (aside from a separate statement of "additional views" filed by three Republican senators in connection with the Senate investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq, which was not written until 2004); the precise information leaked to Novak, Cooper, and the Post's Walter Pincus in order to discount Wilson's qualifications. In their view this is consistent with the memo as the source of the leaked exposure of Plame via someone who was on that flight of Air Force One, as well as confirming that the information was known to be secret.
Supporters of the administration counter that the source of the information could have been the earlier June 10 State Department memo, the notes of the CIA meeting by the unnamed senior State Department analyst, the analyst and other attendees at that meeting, or the persons at CIA involved with arranging Wilson's Niger trip, not just somebody who read the memo aboard Air Force One.
Reactions to the controversy
White House reactions
In the beginning the White House called the allegation that Rove disclosed classified information "totally ridiculous" and "simply not true," and stated that "if anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."[94] [95][96][97] The White House continued to publicly assert that no Bush administration officials were involved in the leak until after the Supreme Court decision of 2005, the subsequent release of internal Time Magazine email, and Time reporter Matt Cooper's decision to testify to the grand jury. Once Karl Rove's involvement was disclosed, the White House refused to comment on the ongoing investigation and stated that they would fire anyone convicted of criminal activity. Critics find an intent to protect Mr. Rove in the new specificity, while supporters say this is indicative of was what was meant all along.
On September 29, 2003, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated that "[i]f anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration,"[98] adding that Karl Rove had specifically assured McClellan that he was not involved, and that "the President expects his administration to adhere to the highest standards of conduct and the highest ethics."
On September 30, 2003, Mr. Bush said " And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of." Followed by, "I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."[99]
President George W. Bush, who has repeatedly denied knowing the identity of the leaker, called the leak a "criminal action" for the first time on 6 October 2003, stating "[i]f anybody has got any information inside our government or outside our government who leaked, you ought to take it to the Justice Department so we can find the leaker."[100][101] Speaking to a crowd of journalists the following day, Bush said "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."[102]
On 8 October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "no one has more of an interest in getting to the bottom of this than the White House does, than the President does."[103]
On 10 October 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, McClellan specifically said that neither Rove nor two other officials whom he had personally questioned – Elliott Abrams, a national security aide, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff – were involved and that anyone who was involved in leaking classified information would be fired. [104]
On 10 June 2004, eight months after the formal outside investigation was begun and five months after the appointment of a Special Counsel, President Bush was asked by a reporter, "Given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, suggesting that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name? ... And do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?" The President responded, "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts."[105]
On 11 July 2005, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, who had since become a grand jury witness himself, refused at a press conference to answer dozens of questions, repeatedly stating that the Bush Administration had made a decision not to comment on an "ongoing criminal investigation" involving White House staff.[106] McClellan declined to answer whether Rove had committed a crime. McClellan also declined to repeat prior categorical denials of Rove's involvement in the leak,[107] nor would he state whether Bush would honor his prior promise to fire individuals involved in the leak.[108][109][110] Although Democratic critics called for Rove's dismissal, or at the very least immediate suspension of Rove's security clearances and access to meetings in which classified material was under discussion, Rove remained working in the White House.
Neither Rove nor the President offered immediate public comment on the unfolding scandal.[111][112][113][114][115] Congressional Republicans remained silent on the issue of the Valerie Plame leak and a White House compromise of national security, and as of 18 July 2005, not a single elected Republican member of Congress had called for Rove to be disciplined or impeached. Rove was vociferously defended by Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman and by many conservative news outlets and commentators, some of whom followed cues laid out in a "talking points" memo, circulated among Republicans on Capitol Hill, which questioned Joseph Wilson's credibility.[116] Among others, David Brooks, conservative New York Times editorialist and NPR commentator, attacked Wilson on 14 July 2005 by falsely alleging that he had claimed Cheney sent him on the Niger mission, and that in speaking to Cooper and others, Rove was merely correcting a reporter's misconception.[117] In an even more extreme example of partisanship, the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal praised Rove on 13 July 2005 for leaking Plame's identity, referring to him as a "whistleblower."[118] Fox News's John Gibson said that even if Rove is not being truthful, he deserves a medal for leaking Plame's CIA identity because Joseph Wilson opposed the war and "Valerie Plame should have been outed by somebody."[119][120]
On 18 July 2005, after having brushed off similar questions about the Rove scandal for nearly a week, President Bush stated that "[i]f someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."[121] [122] This was widely interpreted as a retraction of multiple earlier promises to fire anyone involved in the leak itself. Others counter this view by relying on the one previous mention of illegality, the September 30 2003 remarks, to suggest that criminality was a pre-requisite all along. Many news outlets speculated that Rove's (future) legal defense might be built upon testimony that he was ignorant of Plame's protected status at the time he outed her as a CIA employee; if it could be proven that he had heard of her CIA covert status before speaking to journalists, however, Rove could face far more serious charges. A New York Times story of 16 July 2005 suggested that the Special Counsel grand jury has questioned whether a particular top secret State Department report naming Plame may have been the source of Rove's information.[123]. Colin Powell was photographed carrying the report in Africa in the company of the President in the days following the 6 July 2003 publication of Wilson's Op-Ed piece. Powell is reported to have testified before the grand jury.
White House Chief of Staff, Andrew Card was informed by then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales around 8:00 PM on September 29, 2003, that the Department of Justice was beginning an investigation of the Plame affair, and that the next morning, Gonzalez would order the White House staff to preserve all documents which may be related to the case. Gonzalez has stated that he did not send the order to the staff because of the lateness of the hour, but speculation has suggested that he notified Card in order to give him a twelve hour head start before destruction of any incriminating documents would be prohibited.[124] This was unusual, according to the Washington Post, since the White House Staff is usually quickly notified of any investigations so as to safeguard the integrity of any documents, emails or memoranda that might be required for the investigation.[125]