From The Wall Street Journal, 7/19/05:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB112170178721288385-IRjgoNjlah4opyobXqHaq6Hm5,00.html
Memo Underscored Issue of Shielding Plame's Identity
By ANNE MARIE SQUEO and JOHN D. MCKINNON
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 19, 2005; Page A3
A classified State Department memo that may be pivotal to the CIA leak
case made clear that information identifying an agent and her role in
her husband's intelligence-gathering mission was sensitive and
shouldn't be shared, according to a person familiar with the document.
A special prosecutor is investigating whether Bush administration
officials broke the law by intentionally outing a covert intelligence
operative.
Investigators are trying to determine if the memo, dated June 10,
2003, was how White House officials learned that Valerie Wilson was an
agent for the Central Intelligence Agency.
News that the memo was marked for its sensitivity emerged as President
Bush yesterday appeared to backtrack from his 2004 pledge to fire any
member of his staff involved in the leaking of the CIA agent's name.
In a news conference yesterday that followed disclosures that his top
strategist, Karl Rove, had discussed Ms. Wilson's CIA employment with
two reporters, Mr. Bush adopted a different formulation, specifying
criminality as the standard for firing.
"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my
administration," Mr. Bush said. White House spokesman Scott McClellan
later disputed the suggestion that the president had shifted his
position.
The memo's details are significant because they will make it harder
for officials who saw the document to claim that they didn't realize
the identity of the CIA officer was a sensitive matter.
Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, may also be looking at
whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or
leaking classified information -- were committed.
On July 6, 2003, former diplomat Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece
for the New York Times, disputing administration arguments that Iraq
had sought to buy uranium ore from Africa to make nuclear weapons.
The following day, President Bush and top cabinet officials left for
Africa, and the memo was aboard Air Force One.
The paragraph in the memo discussing Ms. Wilson's involvement in her
husband's trip is marked at the beginning with a letter designation in
brackets to indicate the information shouldn't be shared, according to
the person familiar with the memo.
Such a designation would indicate to a reader that the information was
sensitive.
The memo, though, doesn't specifically describe Ms. Wilson as an
undercover agent, the person familiar with the memo said.
Generally, the federal government has three levels of classified
information -- top secret, secret and confidential -- all indicating
various levels of "damage" to national security if disclosed.
There also is an unclassified designation -- indicating information
that wouldn't harm national security if shared with the public -- but
that wasn't the case for the material on the Wilsons prepared by the
State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
It isn't known what level of classification was assigned to the
information in the memo.
Who received the memo, which was prepared for Marc Grossman, then the
under secretary of state for political affairs, and how widely it was
circulated are issues as Mr. Fitzgerald tries to pinpoint the origin
of the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity.
According to the person familiar with the document, it didn't include
a distribution list.
It isn't known if President Bush has seen the memo.
Mr. Fitzgerald has subpoenaed the phone logs from Air Force One for
the week of the Africa tour, which precedes the revelation of Ms.
Wilson's CIA identity in a column by Robert Novak on July 14.
In that piece, Mr. Novak identified Valerie Plame, using Ms. Wilson's
maiden name, saying that "two senior administration officials" had
told him that Ms. Wilson suggested sending her husband to Niger.
Mr. Novak attempted to reach Ari Fleischer, then the White House press
secretary, in the days before his column appeared.
However, Mr. Fleischer didn't respond to Mr. Novak's inquiries,
according to a person familiar with his account. Mr. Fleischer, who
has since left the administration, is one of several officials who
testified before the grand jury.
In an October 2003 article on the memo, The Wall Street Journal
reported that it details a meeting in early 2002 in which CIA
officials discussed how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium
ore from Niger.
Ms. Wilson, an agent working on issues related to weapons of mass
destruction, recommended her husband, an expert on Africa, to travel
to Niger to investigate the matter.
White House officials had been warning reporters off the notion that
the trip to Niger was ordered by Vice President ***** Cheney, as Mr.
Wilson had suggested.
Emails and a first-person account published this week of his
grand-jury testimony by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper support
this notion.
The grand jury is set to expire in October in this case, though its
tenure could be extended for six months.
It is possible that reporters learned Ms. Wilson's identity from
government officials who hadn't seen the memo.
Mr. Cooper has testified and written that he was first told of Mr.
Wilson's wife by Mr. Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff.
Mr. Rove didn't identify Ms. Wilson by name.
Similarly, one of Mr. Cooper's other sources, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, said he had heard Mr.
Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, but he didn't identify her any
further, according to Mr. Cooper.
The fact that two top White House officials discussed a CIA agent with
reporters has prompted a furor in Washington, with Democrats calling
for the firing of Mr. Rove.
A new ABC News poll signaled how the matter has damaged the
administration's credibility -- and the political peril Mr. Rove still
faces.
Just 25% of Americans say the White House is fully cooperating with
the federal investigation into the leak of Ms. Wilson's identity, down
from about half when the investigation began nearly two years ago.
Moreover, 75% said Mr. Rove should lose his job if he leaked
classified information.
The poll of 1,008 adults, conducted July 13-17, has a margin of error
of three percentage points.
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