New WaPo

Beating the increasingly irrelevant NYT.

An article that appeared on the Time magazine Web site the same week Novak's column was published said that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews . . . that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The same article quoted from an interview with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, saying that Cheney did not know about Wilson's mission "until this year when it became public in the last month or so."

Neither the Novak nor the Time account mentioned that Plame had worked as an undercover operative, which indicates those who leaked the information may not have known she was. Novak, co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," said on the program yesterday that he was not called with the leak but got the information during interviews.

[Jeebus..."operative" and "undercover operative" are equivalent.]

The CIA "asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else," he said. "According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives." Sources said Wilson's wife is a clandestine operations officer for the CIA, now out of the field and working on weapons of mass destruction.

At a forum held last month by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), Wilson said: "I don't think we're going to let this drop. At the end of the day it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me when I use that name. I measure my words."

Wilson said yesterday that he believes Rove "at a minimum condoned the leak," but said he has no evidence Rove was the original leaker. Wilson said that based on reporters' statements, he believes Rove participated in calls that drew attention to his wife's occupation after Novak's column was published. "My knowledge is based on a reporter who called me right after he had spoken to Rove and said that Rove had said my wife was fair game," Wilson said. He said that conversation occurred on July 21.

Wilson said a producer from another network told him about the same time, "The White House is saying things about you and your wife that are so off the wall that we won't use them." Wilson said the series of similar calls he received, which included four journalists from three networks, stopped on July 22, after he appeared on NBC's "Today" show and said the disclosure of his wife's maiden name could jeopardize the "entire network that she may have established."

NBC anchor Tom Brokaw reported last night that correspondent Andrea Mitchell had such a discussion after the Novak column appeared.