Sources: Plame Learned Covert Status from Woodward
Scrappleface - by Scott Ott
(2005-11-16) — Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who secured grand jury indictments against a top Bush administration official last month, today announced he may be close to discovering who told Valerie Plame that she was an undercover CIA agent.
Mr. Fitzgerald refused to release any names, but sources close to the probe said evidence indicates that the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward may have revealed Ms. Plame’s covert status to her.
The prosecutor declined to comment on Mr. Woodward’s possible connection to the case, instead he focused on Ms. Plame’s apparent ignorance of her role at the Central Intelligence Agency.
“In the months, and even years, leading up to July 2003, Valerie Plame was not behaving like someone who knew she was a covert agent,” said Mr. Fitzgerald. “The woman friends knew as Mrs. Joe Wilson seems to have learned of her undercover status at about the same time a reference to her appeared in Robert Novak’s syndicated column.”
The prosecutor said it may be a violation of federal law to reveal a CIA agent’s covert status to the agent.
“We’re looking at what’s called ‘deep deep cover’ in the intel community,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “In other words, the CIA unwittingly may have been using Mrs. Wilson as an undercover agent without her knowledge, or the knowledge of anyone else at the Agency.”
Meanwhile, as former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby awaits trial on five counts of hindering the CIA leak probe, Mr. Novak and Mr. Woodward remain at large. |
