July 22, 2003: CIA Tells Reporters Plame Wilson Was Undercover Official Working on WMD

Newsday reporters Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce have an article published that confirms Valerie Plame Wilson, whose covert CIA identity was blown eight days ago by conservative columnist Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003) based on information provided by two senior administration officials (see July 8, 2003 and July 8, 2003), works at the CIA on WMD issues as an undercover official with the directorate of operations. Phelps and Royce receive confirmation of this from unnamed intelligeice officials. Plame Wilson’s husband, embattled war critic Joseph Wilson, refuses to confirm his wife’s status as a CIA official, but says the leak of her identity to the press, as well as her position as his wife and even her maiden name, are attempts to intimidate others from speaking out against Bush administration intelligence failures. “It’s a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we’ll take your family and drag them through the mud as well,” he says. Wilson and retired CIA official Frank Anderson say that if Plame Wilson is indeed a covert official (see Fall 1992 - 1996), whoever leaked her identity violated the law, endangered her career, and put the lives of her contacts in foreign countries at risk. Anderson, who formerly headed the CIA’s Near East division, says, “When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that’s mean, that’s petty, it’s irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned.” Wilson adds: “If what the two senior administration officials said is true, they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships, and operations.… [T]his White House has taken an asset out of the” weapons of mass destruction fight, “not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile.… This might be seen as a smear on me and my reputation, but what it really is is an attempt to keep anybody else from coming forward” to reveal similar intelligence lapses. A senior intelligence official also confirms that Plame Wilson did not send her husband to Niger, as some have alleged (see February 19, 2002 and July 22, 2003). “They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,” he says. “There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason. I can’t figure out what it could be.… We paid his [Wilson’s] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there.” [Newsday, 7/22/2003]