David Corn and Michael Isikoff are exposing Richard Armitage as Novak’s orginal source for the Valerie Plame story.
In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” Armitage had been at home reading the newspaper and had come across a column by journalist Robert Novak. Months earlier, Novak had caused a huge stir when he revealed that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq-war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. Ever since, Washington had been trying to find out who leaked the information to Novak. The columnist himself had kept quiet. But now, in a second column, Novak provided a tantalizing clue: his primary source, he wrote, was a “senior administration official” who was “not a partisan gunslinger.” Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was “in deep distress,” says a source directly familiar with the conversation who asked not to be identified because of legal sensitivities. “I’m sure he’s talking about me.”
On September 28th, Mike Allen and Dana Priest published Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry: CIA Agent’s Identity Was Leaked to Media. It was in that article that the conspiracy to discredit Wilson was first corroborated by an inside source:
Yesterday, a senior administration official said 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. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson’s account touched off a political fracas over Bush’s use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.
“Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,” the senior official said of the alleged leak.
For three years Plameologists have speculated on who the rat was within the administration that talked out of school. Most speculation has centered on Richard Armitage (although I always preferred George Tenet or Marc Grossman as the source). Is it possible that Richard Armitage told Mike Allen and Dana Priest about Rove and Libby’s smear campaign on September 27th, and then realized on October 1st that he was, in fact, responsible for the leak of Plame’s name?
What happened between the 27th and the 1st? Quite a lot, actually.
On the 28th, MSNBC reported that the Justice Department had begun an investigation of the leaks. On the 29th the Department of Justice notified the CIA that their counterespionage division had also requested an investigation. Clifford May began rolling out Cheney’s defense everyone knew Plame was a spy. Novak appeared on CNN’s Croosfire to say much the same thing. Scott McClellan directly denied Rove’s involvement. John Conyer’s sent a letter to Ashcroft requesting an independent counsel. To cap off the 29th:
8:30 p.m. EST – White House counsel Alberto Gonzales is notified by the Justice Department that it has opened an investigation into the outing of Joseph Wilson’s wife, at the request of the C.I.A. Gonzales tells White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about the investigation immediately, yet waits 12 more hours to inform the White House staff that it must “preserve all materials” relevant to the investigation.
On the 30th, Bush laid down the law:
“Listen, I know of nobody — I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information,” he said. “If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing.”
Perhaps that little comment might have focused Armitage’s mind a bit? Maybe he called Powell early the next morning to try to save his ass? It was all so innocent.
Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn’t thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame’s identity. “I’m afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing,” he later told Carl Ford Jr., State’s intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had “slipped up” and told Novak more than he should have. “He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f—ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat,”
This is a remarkable piece of history being written here. Armitage only realized he was Novak’s primary source two and a half months after Novak published his story? He was distraught? Perhaps he needed a cover story to keep his job and stay out of jail.
I wonder if this caused him any heartburn?
According to three government officials, a lawyer familiar with the case and an Armitage confidant, all of whom would not be named discussing these details, Armitage told Woodward about Plame three weeks before talking to Novak.
That didn’t come out until the eve of Scooter Libby’s indictment. And how is this all spun by Isikoff?
The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone.
The irony is killing me. Literally. The irony is giving me an ulcer. I’ve seen Dick Cheney’s handwriting on Wilson’s editorial. I know all about how his chief-of-staff got indicted for obsruction of justice and perjury. Isikoff’s story stinks. It doesn’t add up.
