A federal prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative has directed considerable effort at learning how widely the operative's identity was disseminated to reporters before it was published last year by columnist Robert D. Novak, according to people with knowledge of the case.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is trying to pinpoint precisely when and from whom several journalists learned that Joseph C. Wilson IV, an outspoken critic of the administration, was sent on an Iraq-related intelligence mission after a recommendation by his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA employee. Plame's name first appeared in a July 14, 2003, column by Novak.
Robert D. Novak's July 14, 2003, column may have been seen by the White House before it ran.
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The timing could be a critical element in assessing whether classified information was illegally disclosed. If White House aides directed reporters to information that had already been published by Novak, they may not have disclosed classified information.
Fitzgerald is continuing to ask questions that suggest he is still trying to assess the accuracy of some of the more serious allegations about administration leaks to reporters other than Novak, according to people involved in the case. Prosecutors have questioned numerous witnesses, some of them repeatedly, to learn whether two senior White House aides actively peddled Plame's identity to more than half a dozen reporters before Novak revealed it in print -- an allegation made by an anonymous administration official in a Sept. 28, 2003, Washington Post article.
Plame's name was leaked to reporters "purely and simply for revenge," the official alleged in the report.
"Prosecutors are interested in the sourcing of that story and whether it's accurate. If it is not accurate, they would like to know that and move along," said an attorney for a witness in the case.
This lawyer and two others involved in the case said Fitzgerald has been trying to sort out whether White House officials mounted a campaign to leak Plame's identity, or whether they were merely spinning information that Novak's column had already put into the public domain. Prosecutors are also investigating who originally gave Novak the information.
As part of his efforts, Fitzgerald has been battling reporters in court, demanding that they disclose conversations with confidential sources
The Justice Department launched a leak investigation at the CIA's request in September 2003 and, after a preliminary inquiry, turned it over to a politically independent special counsel late last year. Justice Department officials said it will be up to Fitzgerald to decide whether to issue a report on his findings if he does not seek criminal charges.
To constitute a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a disclosure by a government official must have been deliberate, the person doing it must have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and he or she must have known that "the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."
In the more than 13 months since the investigation began, prosecutors and FBI agents have interviewed many members of the White House staff, some repeatedly, including some of those on the vice president's staff and in the communications office.
"They seem to continue to be focused on which White House officials talked to members of the press, and whether that was pre- or post-Novak. That's where they are struggling," the witness's lawyer said.
"I think that they are frustrated," said another person who has talked to investigators. "What activity occurred pre-Novak and what occurred post-Novak . . . is a distinction people working the story wouldn't have made at the time," this source said.
Most witnesses have declined to comment on the investigation. Some lawyers representing witnesses have been told that their discussions with investigators should be kept confidential, and as a result there has been little of the usual communication among lawyers about where prosecutors may be headed. One witness's lawyer said that in addition to the admonition from prosecutors, attorneys have avoided communicating with one another so as not to be accused of obstruction.
Among those who are known to have been interviewed by the FBI or testified before the grand jury are Bush White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis I. Libby, Republican National Committee consultant Mary Matalin, former Cheney press aide Catherine Martin, White House press secretary Scott McClellan, communications director Dan Bartlett, deputy press secretary Claire Buchan, and former assistant press secretary Adam Levine. Bush and Cheney also have been interviewed, as has Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
Several reporters have given limited depositions about their conversations with Libby in the days before the Novak column was published. All did so at the urging of Libby, who has told the prosecutor he heard about Wilson's wife's employment from someone in the media, according to lawyers involved in the case. Two news organizations, Time magazine and the New York Times, have gone to the U.S. Court of Appeals to fight subpoenas for reporters' testimony.
Novak and his lawyer have refused to comment on whether he has been subpoenaed or interviewed by Fitzgerald's office. He has written that Plame's identity was revealed to him in passing by one senior administration official and confirmed by a second official. He has said the intent was not to expose an undercover CIA employee, but to explain why a critic of the Bush administration was selected to investigate possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Africa after Cheney asked for more information on the subject in 2002.
Bush mentioned reports of those attempts in his 2003 State of the Union address. Wilson thereafter contended publicly that the White House had exaggerated the intelligence on Iraq, saying he found no evidence that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in the nation of Niger.
Novak said he was told that Wilson was recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA operative in weapons nonproliferation.
Based on what has long been known publicly, there is little doubt that some White House aides circulated the Plame story a week after Novak's column appeared, in an apparent effort to cast doubt on Wilson's credibility. Wilson has said he received calls from two NBC television reporters, on July 20 and July 21, who said White House officials were telling them that Wilson's wife's role was the real story.
In questioning reporters for The Washington Post, NBC and Time, prosecutors have shown a particular interest in the events of July 12, reporters and their attorneys have said. Word that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA had by then circulated to some media organizations, though the origin of the information is not publicly known.
While Novak's column did not run until Monday, July 14, it could have been seen by people in the White House or the media as early as Friday, July 11, when the Creators Syndicate distributed it over the Associated Press wire.
One current or former administration official has told Fitzgerald that he or she had a conversation with Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus on Saturday, July 12, Pincus has said publicly. Pincus also has said his source was not Libby. Pincus has previously said that an administration official told him that day that Wilson's trip to Niger was set up as a boondoggle by his CIA-employed wife.
Time reporter Matthew Cooper has told prosecutors that he talked to Libby on July 12 and mentioned that he had heard that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, a source knowledgeable about his testimony said. Cooper testified that Libby said he had heard the same thing from the media.
Tensions between staff members at the White House and the CIA were running high over Wilson's allegations of exaggerated intelligence, and they would only get worse after the publication of Novak's column.
Then-CIA Director George J. Tenet had issued a statement July 11, 2003, saying that Wilson's findings in Niger did not actually resolve the question of whether Hussein tried to buy uranium there. But Tenet nevertheless said the statement on Africa should not have been included in Bush's State of Union address, and he took responsibility for his agency's vetting of the speech. White House communications director Bartlett agreed, telling reporters that "there was no debate or questions with regard to that line when it was signed off on."
But an agency bureaucrat stirred a new round of confusion and White House anger the following week.
On July 16, two days after Novak's column appeared, Alan Foley, then-director of the CIA's intelligence, nonproliferation and arms control center, told Senate intelligence committee members that he had insisted the White House remove a reference to Niger and uranium from the State of the Union address. The White House maintained there was never any specific reference to Niger in drafts of the speech, nor, it said, had the CIA expressed any objection to referring to reports Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa.
Foley later told the committee staff he may have been confused, according to a Senate committee report on Iraq intelligence released this year. The Senate report determined that Foley's original testimony had been incorrect and that the CIA had not raised concerns about the Iraq-Niger reporting in the speech.
It was in the ensuing days that television reporters Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell would tell Wilson they had heard from administration aides that the real story was not what Wilson found in Niger but his wife's role in selecting him for the trip.
