WP: Rove Told Reporter About Plame But Didn't Name Her, Attorney Says

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Rove Told Reporter About Plame But Didn't Name Her, Attorney Says

By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 11, 2005; Page A01

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified as a covert agent in a newspaper column two years ago, but Rove's lawyer said yesterday that his client did not identify her by name.

Rove had a short conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003, three days before Robert D. Novak publicly exposed Plame in a column about her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson had come under attack from the White House for his assertions that he found no evidence Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and that he reported those findings to top administration officials. Wilson publicly accused the administration of leaking his wife's identity as a means of retaliation.


White House aide Karl Rove revealed the role, but not the name, of a CIA agent, his attorney says. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)

The leak of Plame's name to the news media spawned a federal grand jury investigation that has been seeking to find the origin of the disclosure. Cooper avoided jail time last week by agreeing to testify before the grand jury about conversations with his sources, while New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to discuss her confidential sources.

To be considered a violation of the law, 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 government was actively concealing the covert agent's identity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/10/AR2005071001000.html

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