It's worth revisiting WaPo reporter Walter Pincus' Nieman Watchdog report on the Plame investigation:

...On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.

I didn’t write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip. But I did disclose it in an October 12, 2003 story in The Washington Post. By that time there was a Justice Department criminal investigation into a leak to columnist Robert Novak who published it on July 14, 2003 and identified Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative. Under certain circumstances a government official’s disclosure of her name could be a violation of federal law. The call with me had taken place two days before Novak’s column appeared.

I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson...

It's interesting. There were certain reporters that the White House approached with the Plame info, with the alleged motive of getting them to stop writing about Wilson. As the WSJ reported in July, "White House officials had been warning reporters off the notion that the trip to Niger was ordered by Vice President Dick Cheney, as Mr. Wilson had suggested. Emails and a first-person account published this week of his grand-jury testimony by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper support this notion."
But there were others, like Novak, the WSJ, and Jeff Gannon, who were given the information in order, it seems, to expose Wilson and his wife, to punish Wilson. From the October 2003 WSJ report on the classified memo it was briefed on:

An internal government memo addresses some of the mysteries at the center of the White House leak investigation and could help investigators in the search for who disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, according to two people familiar with the memo.

The memo, prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel, details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger.

Ms. Plame, a member of the agency's clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested at the meeting that her husband, Africa expert and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, could be sent to Niger to investigate the reports, according to current and former government officials familiar with the meeting at the CIA's Virginia headquarters. Soon after, midlevel CIA officials decided to send him, say intelligence officials...

According to current and former officials familiar with the memo, it describes interagency discussions of the yellowcake mystery: whether the reports of Iraq's uranium purchases were credible; which agency should pay for any further investigation; and the suggestion that Mr. Wilson could be sent to check out the allegations. Other officials with knowledge of the memo wouldn't say if it mentions Ms. Plame by name as the one who suggested Mr. Wilson, or if her identity is shielded but obvious because of what is known now about the mission...

This line in the same October 2003 WSJ report is interesting: "...How Mr. Cheney first learned about the yellowcake reports isn't clear. [Cheney spokesperson Cathy] Ms. Martin said he had heard of them independently of his regular CIA briefing. Once he received the agency's response, she says, he made no further inquiries about the information." So where did Cheney independently hear about the Niger allegations? Has Fitzgerald figured it out?

Posted by Laura at October 12, 2005 12:51 PM