Intelligence

Justice Dept. seeks source who leaked CIA agent's name

CNN.com - Justice Dept. seeks source who leaked CIA agent's name - Sep. 28, 2003

Sunday, September 28, 2003 Posted: 1:52 PM EDT (1752 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Justice Department is trying to pinpoint the source of a news leak that identified the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson as a CIA officer, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday.

Administration officials told CNN last week that the CIA had asked the department for a legal opinion as to whether there should be an official investigation into the naming of an undercover CIA employee, allegedly by someone working in the Bush administration.

Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was described as a CIA employee in a July column by Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times. CNN has been unable to reach Plame.

Wilson has publicly chided the Bush administration for including in his 2003 State of the Union speech a British intelligence report that -- before the Iraq war -- Iraq was seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Wilson said he visited Niger in early 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate a British intelligence report alleging that Iraq tried to buy uranium there. Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat in the African nation, reported finding no evidence to support the claim.

Eventually, Bush acknowledged that the uranium statement was not accurate, and CIA director George Tenet said the error was his responsibility.

Wilson has suggested the leak about his wife was directly connected to his public criticism of the administration for including the uranium report in the speech after he had already discredited it.

"The idea, it seemed to me, in going after me and then later making these allegations about my wife, was clearly designed to keep others from stepping forward," Wilson, rormerly the acting U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, told CNN last month.

"I don't know if that's true or not, but you can be sure that a GS-14 or 15 with a couple of kids in college, when he sees the allegations that came from senior administration officials about my family ... in the public domain, you can be sure that he's going to be worried about what might happen if he were to come forward."

GS-14 or GS-15 refers to the federal General Schedule pay scale. GS-15 is the highest level, with annual salaries generally ranging from $95,000 to $125,000.

Rice, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said she "knew nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this."

"Certainly it would not be the way the president expected his White House to operate," she said.

The Justice Department "gets these things as a matter of routine," she said.

Novak's column connected the leak to the Bush administration and reported that Plame "is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

"Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate," wrote Novak, who is also a host of CNN's "Crossfire." "The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."

Though Novak has declined to reveal his sources, Wilson and others have suggested that the information was fed to Novak by the White House.

Asked whether the president will try to determine whether the White House leaked the information about Plame, Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press," "I think it's best, since it's in the hands of the Justice Department, to let it remain there."

September 28, 2003 at 04:46 PM in CIA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home