Source of CIA leak is said to admit role

Source of CIA leak is said to admit role
By Neil A. Lewis
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: August 30, 2006


WASHINGTON Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the CIA leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said.

Armitage did not return calls for comment. But the lawyer and other associates of Armitage have said he has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.

The identification of Armitage as the original leaker to Novak ends what has been a tantalizing mystery. In recent months, however, Armitage's role had become clear to many, and it was recently reported by Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post.

In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Armitage disclosed casually to Novak that Plame worked for the agency at the end of an interview in his office at the State Department. Armitage knew about Plame, the accounts continue, because he had seen a memorandum written by an under secretary of state, Marc Grossman.

Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Plame after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., then the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby's inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.

The two articles reported on a trip by a former U.S. ambassador to Africa sponsored by the CIA to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms program.

Neither article identified the ambassador by name. But it was known inside the government that it was Joseph Wilson 4th, Plame's husband. White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment.

Plame was a covert employee, and after Novak printed her identity, the agency requested an investigation to see whether her name had been leaked illegally.

Some administration critics said her name had been made public in a campaign to punish Wilson, whose commentary in The Times said his investigation in Africa led him to believe that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

The complaints after Novak's column led to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the disclosure of Plame's identity.

The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, did not bring charges in connection with laws that prohibit the willful disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer.

But he did indict Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, saying Libby had testified untruthfully to a grand jury and U.S. agents when he said he learned about Plame's role at the agency from reporters rather than from several officials, including Cheney.

According to an account in a coming book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, excerpts of which appeared in Newsweek this week, Armitage told a few State Department colleagues that he might have been the leaker whose identity was being sought.

The book says Armitage realized this when Novak published a second column in October 2003 that said his source had been an official who was "not a political gunslinger." The Justice Department was quickly informed, and Armitage disclosed his talks with Novak in subsequent interviews with the FBI, even before Fitzgerald's appointment.

The book quotes Carl Ford Jr., then head of the intelligence and research bureau at the State Department, as saying that Armitage had told him, "I may be the guy who caused this whole thing," and that he regretted having told the columnist more than he should have.

Grossman's memorandum did not mention that Plame had undercover status.