Here's the Covert Agent Law.
caselaw.lp.findlaw.com
Novak might get nailed under section (c).
However, radio claims that it was well known in DC that Plame worked for the CIA and was in charge of the nuclear proliferation section. Legally, that might not be enough mean she wasn't "covert", though.
However,
Novak said a confidential source at the CIA told him Plame was "an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operatives." (Full story)
cnn.com
indicates Plame was NOT an agent; hence no law would have been broken.
Wikipedia:
Plame's life history has been documented in the January 2004 Vanity Fair article *"Double Exposure." But little is known of Plame's professional career. 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.
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The Novak column did describe Plame as an "operative," but did not use the description "covert." Novak has claimed that the CIA made "a very weak request" that he not name Plame publicly. WSJ.com columnist James Taranto suggests that this would indicate the absence of "affirmative measures to conceal" necessary for a violation of the law. [3]
The CIA has disputed Novak's claim and indicated that he was told revealing the information could cost agents their lives.
en.wikipedia.org
One of the nagging questions of the Valerie Plame case has always been who in the White House would have even known who Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative, actually was. The identity of covert agents is strictly compartmentalized information; even in high-level briefings on the actions or intelligence gathered by those agents, the agents themselves are identified by alias or code, not by name. The reasons for this practice are obvious.
And, in the case of the White House, there was hardly a pressing need to know the identity of one Ms. Valerie Plame. It is middlingly possible that members of the Bush Administration knew Mrs. Valerie Wilson as wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It is less possible that more than a tight handful of persons -- if that -- would have known Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The highest crime in the Wilson/Plame case likely does not revolve principally around who, precisely, shopped the information about Plame's covert status to Novak and other D.C. journalists: instead, it rests with who told that political operative -- the one with a full rolodex and the skill to select presumed-friendly leak points -- that Plame was a CIA operative in the first place, and worthy of attack. Among the White House political staff, there was precisely zero need to know this information -- and if classified intelligence procedures were being followed, no opportunities to find out.
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