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(CBS) The Justice Department is
looking into an allegation that Bush administration officials blew the cover of
a CIA officer to retaliate against her husband for embarrassing the president,
reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.
The White House has already started damage control, with one unidentified senior administration official telling the Washington Post the leak was "wrong." The chain of events started when White House officials admitted that there was an inaccuracy in President Bush�s State of the Union address. In his speech, Mr. Bush claimed that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium, used to make weapons of mass destruction, from an African nation. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was dispatched to investigate the charge before the State of the Union, revealed that he had warned the Bush administration that there was no evidence to support the claim. This sparked politically damaging questions about the president�s use of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. That�s when Robert Novak, a syndicated newspaper columnist, reported that Wilson�s wife was a CIA operative. "The allegation that Novak made was aimed to intimidate others from coming forward," Wilson told Pinkston. A senior official offered a slightly different motivation to the Washington Post, saying, �Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge.� Wilson, who worked for President Bush�s father and was an ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War, went to Niger in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate the uranium report. "I concluded it was highly unlikely that the sale of yellow cake [a form of uranium] could�ve been done," Wilson said. But the charge remained in the State of the Union address, so two months ago, Wilson went public, charging that, �Some of the intelligence related to Iraq�s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.� Wilson�s report forced the administration to admit it�s mistake, and go on the offensive, Pinkston reports. Eight days later, Novak wrote that the CIA viewed Wilson�s Niger report as not definitive. He added, �His wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger.� "This kind of a low blow, even in a bare knuckles town like Washington, was neither honorable or dignified," Wilson said. On Saturday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denied the White House was the source of the leak. �I haven�t heard that. That�s just totally ridiculous, but we�ve already addressed this issue," he said. But a senior administration official told the Washington Post that before Novak�s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson�s wife. The motivation for coming forward and describing the leaks, the senior official told the Post, is that the leaks were �wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson�s credibility.� Wilson has publicly suggested Bush advisor Karl Rove broke his wife�s cover. In broadcast interviews on Sunday morning, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he knew nothing about the matter, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "I know nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate." Revealing the names of CIA operatives is a felony, and the CIA has asked the Justice Department to begin a probe, Pinkston reports. The Justice Department and the FBI are trying to determine whether there was a violation of the law and, if so, then whether a full-blown criminal investigation is warranted. Congressional sources say there may be calls for the appointment of an independent investigation. |
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