>Armitage called the day he read the Novak column before Fitzgerald was appointed.
In the spring of 2003, as details emerged about a then-unnamed former ambassador who had traveled to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had sought to buy yellow cake uranium from the African nation and found the claims meritless, there was clearly an unhealthy fixation on Wilson and his wife within the White House — and an effort to run damage control to salvage one of the administration’s key assertions about Iraq’s pursuit of WMDs. The facts are clear: On June 12, 2003, more than a month before Novak's column, Libby learned of Plame’s identity in a conversation with the vice president. Authorized by the president himself to disclose part of the highly classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in order to defend the administration’s position on Iraq, Libby met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller later that month. According to Libby’s indictment, at least part of their conversation centered on Wilson's Niger trip and Libby suggested to Miller that Wilson’s wife might work for the CIA. When Libby and Miller met again on July 8, they again discussed Wilson’s trip and, possibly to cover his tracks, Libby asked that his comments be attributed to “a former Hill staffer” instead of a “senior administration official.” During this conversation, according to the indictment, Libby was critical of the CIA’s report on the fact-finding mission and again “advised Miller of his belief that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.” Three days later, Karl Rove spoke with Time magazine’s Matt Cooper, telling him not to “get too far out on Wilson” and that the Niger trip had been authorized by “Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues” – (actually, the trip had been authorized by the CIA, though Plame had suggested her husband, who had contacts in the region, for the job). The following day, the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, spoke with an administration official who, using similar talking points, also sought to play down the significance of the Niger trip, telling him “that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored 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.” Meanwhile, during this timeframe, the Post has reported that “two top white house officials contacted at least six reporters and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife.”
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