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| Home Front: Politix |
| Novak Hints Book Was Source |
| 2005-08-02 |
| WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - One of the most puzzling aspects of the C.I.A. leak case has had to do with the name of the exposed officer. Why did the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak identify her as Valerie Plame in exposing her link to the C.I.A. in July 2003 when she had been known for years both at the agency and in her personal life by her married name, Valerie Wilson? Mr. Novak offered a possible explanation for the disconnect on Monday, suggesting in his column that he could have obtained Ms. Wilson's maiden name from the directory Who's Who in America, which used that name in identifying her as the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador. Mr. Novak did not explicitly cite the directory as his source. Nor was this his first public reference to the Who's Who listing. In a column in October 2003, three months after he had first disclosed Ms. Wilson's name and her role, Mr. Novak cited the published listing as evidence that Ms. Wilson's identity was "no secret." But in drawing renewed attention to the published listing, Mr. Novak seemed to suggest more directly than ever before that the scrutiny that has focused on which of his sources provided him the name might have been misplaced, and that he might well have figured it out by himself. Any request that he withhold Ms. Wilson's name from his column of July 14, 2003, would have been "meaningless" once he had been told she was married to Mr. Wilson, Mr. Novak wrote on Monday, because she was openly listed in the directory. But Mr. Novak also wrote that he would never have used Ms. Wilson's name had anyone from the C.I.A. told him that doing so would endanger her or anyone else. The special counsel in the leak case has been trying to determine whether government officials violated federal laws about the handling of classified information when someone leaked Ms. Wilson's identity and C.I.A. role to reporters. The fact that Mr. Novak identified her as Valerie Plame had seemed to some observers to narrow the field of possible suspects in the leak case, because she had not used that name since her marriage in 1998. A State Department memorandum drafted in 2003 and taken on board Air Force One the week before Mr. Novak's column ran identifies Ms. Wilson by her married name rather than Ms. Plame. The prosecutor has taken an interest in the memorandum - which outlines Ms. Wilson's role in suggesting her husband for a fact-finding trip to Niger - and has shown it to numerous witnesses in the case in an apparent effort to determine whether it was a source for Mr. Novak or the officials who leaked the information to him. If not for Who's Who, it is not clear how Mr. Novak would have decided to identify Ms. Wilson as Ms. Plame rather than the name she commonly used. In the Who's Who directory for 2003, personal information about Mr. Wilson includes his origins in Bridgeport, Conn., and the names of his previous wife and his four children. His current wife is listed as Valerie Elise Plame, and the date of their marriage April 3, 1998. There is no mention of her employer. |
| Posted by:Steve |