Sources Tell 'Time' Bush Officials Learned Plame CIA Link Early--and Not from Media
editorandpublisher.com
NEW YORK Time magazine is reporting today on its Web site that according to its sources "some" White House officials may have learned that CIA officer Valerie Plame was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson "weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration. That prospect increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from reporters, according to his lawyer."
The Time account reveals that in the first week of June 2003 the CIA's public-affairs office received an inquiry about Wilson's trip to Africa from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. "That office then contacted Plame's unit, which had sent Wilson to Niger, but stopped short of drafting an internal report," according to the magazine. "The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip from Carl Ford, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research." Sources familiar with the memo "say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June." Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy too.
After Pincus' article ran on June 12, a former intelligence officer told Time, "there was general discussion with the National Security Council and the White House and State Department and others" about Wilson's trip and its origins.
The article concludes: "A source familiar with the memo says neither Powell nor Armitage spoke to the White House about it until after July 6. John McLaughlin, then deputy head of the CIA, confirms that the White House asked about the Wilson trip, but can't remember exactly when. One thing he's sure of, says McLaughlin, who has been interviewed by prosecutors, is that 'we looked into it and found the facts of it, and passed it on.'" |
