Richard Armitage
On July 11, 2006, Robert Novak posted a column titled "My Role in the Valerie Plame Leak Story": "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret." Novak dispels rumors that he asserted his Fifth Amendment right and made a plea bargain, stating: "I have cooperated in the investigation." He continues:
For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knew — independent of me — the identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.... In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part. Following my interview with the primary source, I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America." (Italics added.)
Harlow is the person whom Novak refers to as his "CIA source" for his column "Mission to Niger".
Michael Isikoff revealed portions of his new book titled Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, co-authored with David Corn, in the August 28, 2006, issue of Newsweek. Isikoff reports that then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had a central role in the Plame affair.
In their book Hubris Isikoff and Corn reveal – as both Armitage and syndicated columnist Robert Novak acknowledged publicly later – that Armitage was Novak's "initial" and "primary source" for Novak's July 2003 column that revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative and that after Novak revealed his "primary source" (Novak's phrase) was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger," Armitage phoned Colin Powell that morning and was "in deep distress." Reportedly, Armitage told Powell: "I'm sure talking about me." In his Newsweek article, Isikoff states:
The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA... felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's source – possibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more. Armitage's role thus remained that rarest of Washington phenomena: a hot secret that never leaked.
According to Isikoff, as based on his sources, Armitage told Bob Woodward Plame's identity three weeks before talking to Novak, and Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged because Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.
In an August 27, 2006, appearance on Meet the Press, Novak was asked if indeed Armitage was his source of Mrs. Wilson's identity as a CIA operative. Novak responded: "I told Mr. Isikoff... that I do not identify my sources on any subject if they’re on a confidential basis until they identify themselves... I’m going to say one thing, though, I haven’t said before. And that is that I believe that the time has way passed for my source to identify himself."
On August 30, 2006, the New York Times reported that the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage confirmed he was Novak's "initial and primary source" for Plame's identity. The New York Times also reported "Mr. Armitage cooperated voluntarily in the case, never hired a lawyer and testified several times to the grand jury, according to people who are familiar with his role and actions in the case. He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife’s computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said. But Mr. Armitage kept his actions secret, not even telling President Bush because the prosecutor asked him not to divulge it, the people said... Mr. Armitage had prepared a resignation letter, his associates said. But he stayed on the job because State Department officials advised that his sudden departure could lead to the disclosure of his role in the leak, the people aware of his actions said.... He resigned in November 2004, but remained a subject of the inquiry until when the prosecutor advised him in a letter that he would not be charged."
In an interview with CBS News first broadcast on September 7, 2006, Armitage admitted that he was Novak's "initial" and "primary source" (Novak's words). In the interview he described his conversation with Novak: "At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, "Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?" I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency, adding it was "just an offhand question.... I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had." After acknowledging that he was indeed Robert Novak's initial and primary source for the column outing Plame, Richard Armitage referred to what has been termed "a classified State Department memorandum" which purportedly refers to Valerie Wilson.
While the document is "classified," Armitage stated, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified.... I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government.... I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative.... I didn't try to out anybody." In a phone interview with The Washington Post, Armitage reiterated his claim, stating that in 40 years of reading classified materials "I have never seen in a memo... a covert agent's name."
According to The Washington Post, Armitage attributed his not being charged in the investigation to his candor in speaking with investigators about his action; he says that he turned over his computers and never hired an attorney: "'I did not need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth.'"
Novak disputed Armitage's claim that the disclosure was "inadvertent." In a column titled The real story behind the Armitage story, Novak stated: "First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column... he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson's role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column — implying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information." Novak also disputes Armitage's claim that he learned he was Novak's "primary source" (Novak's phrase) only after reading Novak's October 1 column: "I believed contacted me October 1 because of news the weekend of September 27–28 that the Justice Department was investigating the leak."
Armitage also acknowledged that he was Woodward's source. At the end of a lengthy interview conducted in the first week of September 2006, he describes his June 2003 conversation with Woodward as an afterthought: "He said, 'Hey, what's the deal with Wilson?' and I said, 'I think his wife works out there.'"
In his memoir, titled "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting In Washington," Novak wrote that after Armitage revealed to him that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, "Armitage smiled and said: 'That's real Evans and Novak, isn't it?.' I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column."
On November 11, 2007, Armitage appeared on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and was asked to respond to Valerie Wilson's assertion that Armitage "did a very foolish thing" in revealing her identity to Novak. Armitage and Blitzer had the following exchange:
ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson," not "Mrs. Plame," worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.
BLITZER: Normally in memos they don't name covert operatives?
ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.
BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?
ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.
BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.
ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covered agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.
BLITZER: So you agree with her on that.
ARMITAGE: Yeah. Absolutely.
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