A newbe named Bumblebee just told me about this story, so I am posting and am giving the credit to the find to this alert and stingingly good new DUer.
http://www.dailykos.com/When Did The White House Plame Outing Really Start?
by Hunter
Sun Jul 10th, 2005 at 18:40:09 PDT
Hmm. Via a Paul Lukasiak posting at TPMCafe comes this July 6th 2005 Walter Pincus piece that I'd seen previously, but I admit I didn't really "get" the potential importance of the nut grafs the first time I read it:
On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.
I didn't write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip. But I did disclose it in an October 12, 2003 story
in The Washington Post. By that time there was a Justice Department criminal investigation into a leak to columnist Robert Novak who published it on July 14, 2003 and identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative. Under certain circumstances a government official's disclosure of her name could be a violation of federal law. The call with me had taken place two days before Novak's column appeared.
Now, here's the thing about that bolded sentence. Even presuming Novak's column was seen at the White House before publication: Novak's column didn't say that.
Bush Administration :: Permalink :: There's more... (172 comments, 585 words in story)
Paranoia