Ex-Colleague Says Armitage Was Source of CIA Leak
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 29, 2006; Page A06
Three weeks before Armitage spoke to Novak, he made a similar, offhand disclosure of Plame's employment to Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, the former colleague added. Armitage disclosed the conversation to Fitzgerald after Woodward reminded him of it in October 2005, and Woodward subsequently gave a deposition about the conversation.
"Of course, I have nothing to say about sources," Woodward said yesterday.
Armitage's involvement in the matter does not fit neatly into the assertions of Bush
administration critics that Plame's employment was disclosed as part of a White House conspiracy to besmirch Wilson by suggesting his Niger trip stemmed from nepotism at the CIA. Wilson and Plame have sued top administration officials, alleging that the leak was meant as retaliation.
But Armitage, the source Novak had described obliquely as someone who is "not a political gunslinger," was by all accounts hardly a tool of White House political operatives. As the No. 2 official at the State Department from March 2001 to February 2005, Armitage was a prominent Republican appointee. But he also privately disagreed with the tone and style of White House policymaking on Iraq and other matters.
"Just because Armitage did this on his own, earlier, doesn't mean that there wasn't a White House conspiracy to 'out' Valerie
Wilson. We don't think it affects the case," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group pressing the lawsuit.
more...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/28/AR2006082801278.html?nav=rss_nation/special Fess Up, Mr. Armitage
Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest. Wednesday, August 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
From its very start, the ballyhooed case of who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak has been drenched in partisan politics and media hypocrisy. The more we learn, however, the more it also reveals about the internal dysfunction of the Bush Administration and the lack of loyalty among some of its most senior officials.
The latest news is that the Bush official who first disclosed Ms. Plame's identity was none other than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. According to a new book by liberal journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff, Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's primary source for his now famous column of July 14, 2003, that first publicly revealed Ms. Plame's CIA pedigree.
In other words, the leaker wasn't Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or anyone else in the White House who has been accused of running a conspiracy against Ms. Plame as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson's false accusations against the White House's case for war with Iraq. So what have the last three years been all about anyway? Political opportunism and internal score-settling, among other things.
Snip...
For starters, fessing up would put to rest the conspiracy theories once and for all. Bush opponents have continued to promote this myth, with Mr. Wilson writing in June 2004 that "the conspiracy to destroy us was most likely conceived--and carried out--within the office of the vice president of the United States." Not a word of that was true.
Mr. Novak hasn't himself confirmed that Mr. Armitage was his primary source, since Mr. Armitage hasn't yet given him leave to do so. But Mr. Novak has written that his source was not a "partisan gunslinger," and the columnist has also said that he himself put in the call to Mr. Rove to confirm what he'd first heard from his main source (presumably Mr. Armitage). The White House, in short, was not engaged in any campaign to "out" Ms. Plame.
Snip...
Strangely, Mr. Armitage never seems to have told Mr. Fitzgerald that he'd talked to Mr. Woodward. And Mr. Fitzgerald never seems to have asked to see Mr. Armitage's appointment calendar, which would have showed his meeting with Mr. Novak. It's all enough to make us wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald didn't buy into the liberal "conspiracy" theory of this case from the start and target the White House while giving Mr. Armitage a pass.
more...
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008872
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