Sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration
continue to release classified information to damage the figures at
the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV
and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by
unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by
Robert D. Novak.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a
still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting
Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the
CIA.
The document, written by a State Department official who works for its
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the
CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior
administration official who has seen it.
CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the
official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about
Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have
attended the meeting.
"It has been circulated around," one official said. CIA and State
Department officials have refused to discuss the document.
On Oct. 28, Talon News, a news company tied to a group called GOP USA,
posted on the Internet an interview with Wilson in which the Talon
News questioner asks:
"An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel
details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the
agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues,
suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you
dispute that?"
On Monday, the Senate minority leader and the ranking Democrat on the
Armed Services Committee sent a letter to Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft demanding more information about the probe.
"We request that you provide us with an overall status of the
investigation, including the number of people the Justice Department
has interviewed, the number of briefings you have received, the
general types of information you are briefed on, what conditions you
have placed on the scope of these briefings to ensure the independence
of this investigation, and whether you have discussed this case with
senior administration officials outside the Justice Department," wrote
the senators, Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) and Carl M. Levin (Mich.).
The senators said that it is an apparent conflict of interest for
Ashcroft to be briefed on the subject, and again requested a special
counsel to prosecute the case, which Ashcroft has so far opposed.
FBI agents have told people they have interviewed that they may be
asked to testify before a grand jury, according to sources close to
the case.
That could indicate that prosecutors believe they have a case, or it
could be a routine method of getting testimony on the record even
though no indictment is ever sought.
White House officials profess to be unconcerned about the outcome of
the investigation.
Some administration officials said they believe charges will
eventually result, although it could be as long from now as 2005.
A Republican legal source who has had detailed conversations about the
matter with White House officials said he "doesn't get any sense at
all that they're worried or concerned, or that they're covering up."
Still, the White House is eager for the findings to emerge soon, or
wait until after the November election.
"The only fear I've heard expressed is that the investigation will be
too slow or too fast and will kick into a visible mode in a way that
is poorly timed for the election," the Republican said.
"If they prosecuted someone tomorrow, I don't think the White House
would care. And they can do it in December 2004. They just don't want
it to become an issue in the election."
FBI agents showed up unannounced last week at the home of a private
citizen who was believed to have some knowledge of White House
handling of Plame's identity, according to a source involved in the
investigation.
The source refused to identify the person who was interviewed, but
said it was a man who had only peripheral knowledge of the case and
had discussed it with officials in the White House.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is also preparing a report
that is likely to cover both Wilson's mission to Niger and the
subsequent leak of Plame's name.
The report is still months from completion, officials said.
Wilson, in an interview, defended his participation in the glossy
magazine's article.
"The Republicans are going to say anything to deflect attention from
the crime, which was exposing a CIA operative," he said, adding that
his wife's "cover was completely blown" before the article appeared.
From The Washington Post, 12/26/03:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30842-2003Dec25.html
Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum
By Mike Allen and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 26, 2003; Page A01
The Justice Department has added a fourth prosecutor to the team
investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, while
the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from
administration officials, sources close to the case said.
Administration and CIA officials said they have seen signs in the past
few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed
doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly
said or seen for months.
According to administration officials and people familiar with some of
the interviews, FBI agents apparently started their White House
questioning with top figures -- including President Bush's senior
adviser, Karl Rove -- and then worked down to more junior officials.
The agents appear to have a great deal of information and have
constructed detailed chronologies of various officials' possible tie
to the leak, people familiar with the questioning said.
The Justice Department has added a prosecutor specializing in
counterintelligence, joining two other counterintelligence prosecutors
and one from Justice's Public Integrity section.
Agents investigating the matter have been increasingly apparent at CIA
headquarters in Langley over the past three weeks, officials said.
"They are still active," a senior official said.
But sources said the CIA believes that people in the administration
continue to release classified information to damage the figures at
the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV
and his wife, Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA officer by
unidentified senior administration officials for a July 14 column by
Robert D. Novak.
Wilson, a prominent critic of the administration over Iraq, has said
that was done to retaliate against him for continuing to publicize his
conclusion, after a 2002 mission for the CIA, that there was little
evidence Iraq had sought uranium in Africa to develop nuclear weapons.
__________________________________________________________
Expect this criminal act of exposing a CIA undercover agent by Bush
White House personnel to remain unresolved beyond the 2004 election.
Harry
.
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