[Mb-civic] Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 16, 2005; Page A01

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under 
oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official 
told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the 
agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel 
Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 
2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, 
and that he did not believe the information to be classified or 
sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed 
conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 
-- one week after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 
"Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to 
testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, 
Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official's name or 
provide crucial details about the testimony. Woodward did not share the 
information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. 
until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he 
remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation 
taking place.

Woodward said he also testified that he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, 
and discussed Iraq policy as part of his research for a book on 
President Bush's march to war. He said he does not believe Libby said 
anything about Plame.

He also told Fitzgerald that it is possible he asked Libby about Plame 
or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. He based that 
testimony on an 18-page list of questions he planned to ask Libby in an 
interview that included the phrases "yellowcake" and "Joe Wilson's 
wife." Woodward said in his statement, however, that "I had no 
recollection" of mentioning the pair to Libby. He also said that his 
original government source did not mention Plame by name, referring to 
her only as "Wilson's wife."

Woodward's testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology 
Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting 
Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official -- not Libby 
-- the first government employee to disclose Plame's CIA employment to a 
reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of 
the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame 
from a government source.

The testimony, however, does not appear to shed new light on whether 
Libby is guilty of lying and obstructing justice in the nearly 
two-year-old probe or provide new insight into the role of senior Bush 
adviser Karl Rove, who remains under investigation.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, said that Rove is not the unnamed 
official who told Woodward about Plame and that he did not discuss Plame 
with Woodward.

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby's lawyers, said yesterday that 
Woodward's testimony undermines Fitzgerald's public claims about his 
client and raises questions about what else the prosecutor may not know. 
Libby has said he learned Plame's identity from NBC's Tim Russert.

"If what Woodward says is so, will Mr. Fitzgerald now say he was wrong 
to say on TV that Scooter Libby was the first official to give this 
information to a reporter?" Jeffress said last night. "The second 
question I would have is: Why did Mr. Fitzgerald indict Mr. Libby before 
fully investigating what other reporters knew about Wilson's wife?"

Fitzgerald has spent nearly two years investigating whether senior Bush 
administration officials illegally leaked classified information -- 
Plame's identity as a CIA operative -- to reporters to discredit 
allegations made by Wilson. Plame's name was revealed in a July 14, 
2003, column by Robert D. Novak, eight days after Wilson publicly 
accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq 
war. Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment yesterday.

(continued)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501857.html
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