The Architect

After his eight-day assignment to Niger in early 2002, Joseph Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations of a uranium purchase were unfounded and most likely a hoax. President Bush, in making the case to go to war with Iraq, cited, among other things, the allegations regarding the Iraq-Niger yellow cake connection in his 2003 State of the Union address, the reverse of what Wilson had reported to the CIA. Wilson, angered by the misleading information coming out of the President’s mouth, rebuked the White House for the false allegation in public, and shortly afterward two top officials from the White House leaked the identity of his wife as a CIA operative to six reporters in retaliation for Wilson’s speaking out. Novak wrote his now-infamous newspaper column alleging that Wilson had received his assignment because his wife had recommended him for the position.

“Wilson never worked for the CIA,” Novak wrote, “but his wife . . . is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger.”

The White House and CIA have since said that Plame had no role in the selection of her husband for the mission.

Of course, nobody would have even been looking into Plame’s background had White House officials — Karl Rove and an as yet unnamed official — not leaked her status as a clandestine CIA operative, and if Novak hadn’t agreed to out her for the Bush administration in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson. Karl Rove insists he wasn’t the one to leak the information and testified before a grand jury last October to that effect, but those six reporters who got phone calls could easily testify as to who it was that contacted them. A quick look at the White House and Air Force One telephone logs would also reveal who called whom, and when. Perhaps an additional look at the phone logs of Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, or Elliot Abrams would also reveal some pertinent information.

TIME magazine, on the other hand, has just agreed to turn over the notes, emails, and computer records of its reporter, Matthew Cooper. Those records purportedly show that Karl Rove was the source of the leaked, classified information that Cooper received.

We, apparently, have a White House that appears perfectly willing to go after the family members of its critics, regardless of the consequences to our intelligence agents in the field. Valerie Plame’s career is destroyed and her sources are also endangered. The act itself displays a level of viciousness that is dangerous to national security and to the functioning of this, or any, democracy.

Allegedly, Rove chose to “out” a deep-cover agent working against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in retaliation for a perceived political slight by her husband. In the process of the outing, the Administration destroyed the cover of the energy company she ostensibly worked for, ended her covert career, and endangered every foreign source and contact that she and her fellow agents had been involved with, thereby putting a national security asset out of commission at a time of war. The president should have demanded swift action to appoint an independent investigator and to remove the offender from his post. Evidence suggests that the President knew, but took no action to stop the release of Plame’s name.

If a journalist witnesses a source commit a crime and does not report it, or even writes a piece about it, is this some sort of 1st Amendment free speech issue? Miller, Cooper et. al. are not protecting a source who told them of a crime, they are witnesses to a crime, hence all the hubbub and being hauled into court. Just because they are in the habit of “not revealing sources” doesn’t mean they can steal candy, sell drugs, or participate in a criminal conspiracy and get a pass. Witnessing a crime is not a protected journalistic activity. Miller, Cooper et. al. are not being prevented from practicing free press, rather they are being enjoined to reveal the name of a criminal who, in the act of speaking of the identity of Plame as a CIA operative, committed a crime against the security of the nation — during a time of war — in the name of political revenge.

The leak may constitute a felony. According to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison, as much as $50,000 in fines, or both. Plame’s contacts in other countries may well have been murdered because the White House revealed her identity for cheap political reasons. I would suggest that if any of Valerie Plame’s contacts have been killed, that the source of the leak could possibly be charged as an accessory to multiple murders.

And what about those forged Niger uranium documents: Who forged them and who was the source behind these documents? Indeed, there is much that is still unknown with regard to the events surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame.

This isn’t a Democrat v. Republican issue. This, the evidence that there could be a traitor to our country and to our nation’s intelligence services during a time of war among the highest levels of the Executive Branch, is a matter of national security.

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Aine MacDermot is a Tech Editor at, and writes an Op/Ed column for Radio News America. This article also appears there.