The CIA leak grand jury investigation (related to the "CIA leak scandal", also known as the "Plame affair") was a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee's identity", a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
CIA leak scandal ("Plame affair")
The "CIA leak scandal", or the "Plame affair", refers to a dispute stemming from allegations that one or more White House officials revealed Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity as "Valerie Plame" to reporters.
In his July 14, 2003 Washington Post column, Robert Novak revealed the name of CIA employee Valerie Plame, wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had covert status. "Exhibit A" in sentencing memorandum exhibits, United States v. Libby, online posting of public document, The Next Hurrah (blog), May 26, 2007: 2-3.Cf. "Valerie Plame, Covert After All" ("Though some on the right have denied it, Plame was a covert CIA operative when she was exposed by Robert Novak. Read the document that proves It."), Salon, May 30, 2007, accessed August 12, 2007. Includes screen shots of the PDF (three pages). Wilson, a former U.S. Ambassador, had criticized the Bush administration in a July 6, 2003, editorial in The New York Times. Wilson argued that the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In his column, Novak diminished Wilson's claims:
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate ...
On October 1, 2003, Richard Armitage told both Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that he "was the inadvertent leak".
Appointment of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald On September 26, 2003, at the request of the CIA, the Department of Justice and the FBI began a criminal investigation into the possible unauthorized disclosure of classified information regarding Valerie Wilson's CIA affiliation to various reporters in the spring of 2003. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft initially headed up the investigation. On August 13, 2005, journalist Murray Waas reported that Justice Department and FBI officials had recommended appointing a special prosecutor to the case because they felt that Karl Rove had not been truthful in early interviews, withholding from FBI investigators his conversation with Cooper about Plame and maintaining that he had first learned of Plame's CIA identity from a journalist whose name Rove could not recall. In addition, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, from whose prior campaigns Rove had been paid $746,000 in consulting fees, had been briefed on the contents of at least one of Rove's interviews with the FBI, raising concerns of a conflict of interest. An October 2, 2003 New York Times article similarly connected Karl Rove to the matter and highlighted his prior employment in three previous political campaigns for Ashcroft. Ashcroft subsequently recused himself from the investigation, apparently at the end of December 2003.
U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed Special Counsel on December 30, 2003.
Letter from James B. Comey, Acting Attorney General, to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney:
By the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. 509, 510, and 515, and in my capacity as Acting Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 508, I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity, and I direct you to exercise that authority as Special Counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the department.
Fitzgerald began investigations into the leak working from White House telephone records turned over to the FBI in October 2003.A Leak's Wider Ripples
Fitzgerald learned of Armitage's role in the leak "shortly after his appointment in 2003".
The investigation
The first grand jury On October 31, 2003, a grand jury was sworn in and began taking testimony. A complete list of witnesses to testify there is not known, in part because Fitzgerald has conducted his investigation with much more discretion than previous presidential investigations.NPR: Investigating the President, Now and Then
Some individuals have acknowledged giving testimony, including White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Deputy Press Secretary Claire Buchan, former press secretary Ari Fleischer, former special advisor to the president Karen Hughes, former White House communications aide Adam Levine, former advisor to the Vice President Mary Matalin, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Fitzgerald interviewed both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush.Bush Interviewed About CIA Leak (washingtonpost.com)
Legal filings by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald contain many pages blanked out for security reasons, leading some observers to speculate that Fitzgerald has pursued the extent to which national security was compromised by Plame's identity being revealed.
In March 2004, the Special Counsel subpoenaed the telephone records of Air Force One.
Known grand jury witnesses
Cabinet Alberto Gonzales — Attorney General, then serving as White House Counsel Colin Powell — former Secretary of State on August 16, 2004
CIA George Tenet — former Director Bill Harlow — former spokesman John McLaughlin — Deputy Director
Vice-president's Office Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. — Chief of Staff Mary Matalin — former advisor
President Karen Hughes — former special advisor Karl Rove — Senior Advisor Israel Hernandez — former advisor to Karl Rove, Commerce Department official Susan Ralston — secretary to Karl Rove
White House Press Office Claire Buchan — Deputy Press Secretary Ari Fleischer — former Press Secretary Adam Levine (press aide) — former press aide Scott McClellan — Press Secretary
Other government officials Carl Ford — former director of Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the State Department.
Media Matt Cooper — Time journalist Judith Miller — The New York Times journalist Walter Pincus — Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward — Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Robert Novak — columnist who published Plame's identity Viveca Novak — Time magazine reporter Tim Russert — NBC News senior correspondent, host of Meet the Press
Other Robert Luskin — attorney for Karl Rove.
Journalists and contempt of court Several journalists have testified on this matter.
Novak Columnist Robert Novak, who later admitted that the CIA attempted to dissuade him from revealing Plame's name in print, "appears to have made some kind of arrangement with the special prosecutor" (according to Newsweek) and he was not charged with contempt of court.
Cooper On July 2, 2005, Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that his client spoke to TIME reporter Matt Cooper "three or four days" before Plame's identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak. (Cooper's article in TIME, citing unnamed and anonymous "government officials", confirmed Plame to be a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction". Cooper's article appeared three days after Novak's column was published.) Rove's lawyer, however, asserted that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA". This second statement has since been called into question by an e-mail, written three days before Novak's column, in which Cooper indicated that Rove had told him Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. If Rove were aware that this was classified information at the time, then both disclaimers by his lawyer would be untrue. Furthermore, Luskin said that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" (three times, according to the Los Angeles Times of July 3, 2005) and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him and that Rove "has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else." Rove's lawyer declined to share with Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff the nature or contents of his client's conversations with Cooper.
On July 6, 2005, Cooper agreed to testify, thus avoiding being held in contempt of court and sent to jail. Cooper said "I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions for not testifying", but told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance at court he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" an indication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep his source's identity secret. For some observers this called into question the allegations against Rove, who had signed a waiver months before permitting reporters to testify about their conversations with him (see above paragraph).
Cooper, however, stated in court that he did not previously accept a general waiver to journalists signed by his source (whom he did not identify by name), because he had made a personal pledge of confidentiality to his source. The 'dramatic change' which allowed Cooper to testify was later revealed to be a phone conversation between lawyers for Cooper and his source confirming that the waiver signed two years earlier applied to conversations with Cooper. Citing a "person who has been officially briefed on the case", The New York Times identified Rove as the individual in question, a fact later confirmed by Rove's own lawyer. According to one of Cooper's lawyers, Cooper has previously testified before the grand jury regarding conversations with Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, after having received Libby's specific permission to testify.
Cooper testified before a grand jury on July 13, 2005, confirming that Rove was the source who told him Wilson's wife was an employee of the CIA. In the July 17, 2005 TIME magazine article detailing his grand jury testimony, Cooper wrote that Rove never used Plame's name nor indicated that she had covert status, although Rove did apparently convey that certain information relating to her was classified: "As for Wilson's wife, I told the grand jury I was certain that Rove never used her name and that, indeed, I did not learn her name until the following week, when I either saw it in Robert Novak's column or Googled her, I can't recall which, ... [but] was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'W.M.D.'? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me." Cooper also explained to the grand jury that the "double super secret background" under which Rove spoke to him was not an official White House or TIME magazine source or security designation, but an allusion to the 1978 film Animal House, in which a college fraternity is placed under "double secret probation".
Miller