http://www.msnbc.com/news/937524.asp?0cv=CB10&cp1=1
CIA seeks probe of White House
Agency asks Justice to investigate leak of employee's identity
EXCLUSIVE
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate
allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity
of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman's husband,
a former ambassador who publicly criticized
President Bush's since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade
uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned.
THE FORMER ENVOY, Joseph Wilson, who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the
first Gulf War, was dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate a British
intelligence report that Iraq sought to buy uranium there. Although Wilson
discredited the report, Bush cited it in his State of the Union address in
January among the evidence he said justified military action in Iraq. The
administration has since had to repudiate the claim. CIA Director George Tenet
said the 16-word sentence should not have been
included in Bush's Jan. 28 speech and publicly accepted responsibility for
allowing it to remain in the president's text.
Wilson published an article in July alleging, however, that the White House
recklessly made the charge knowing it was false. "We spend billions
of dollars on intelligence," Wilson wrote. "But we end up putting
something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another
intelligence agency, something we
cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no
on-the-ground presence."
WHITE HOUSE DENIALS
The next week, columnist Robert Novak published an article in which he
revealed that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a
covert CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction. "Two
senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to
Niger to investigate," Novak wrote. The White House has denied being
Novak's source, whom he has refused to identify. But Wilson has said other
reporters have told
him White House officials leaked Plame's identity.
NBC News' Andrea Mitchell reported Friday night that the CIA has asked the
Justice Department to investigate whether White House officials blew Plame's
cover in retaliation against Wilson. Revealing
the identities of covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National
Agents' Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information
Act.
ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE CLAIM
When the Niger claim first arose, in February 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to
Africa to investigate. He reported finding no credible evidence that Iraq was
seeking uranium from Niger. The CIA's doubts about the uranium claim were
reported
through routine intelligence traffic throughout the government, U.S.
intelligence officials said. Those doubts were also reported to the British.
The Niger report included a notation that it was
unconfirmed when it was published in the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate, the classified summary of intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
The CIA had the Niger claim removed from at least two speeches before they
were given: Bush's October address on the Iraqi
threat, and a speech by U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte. As the State of the
Union address was being written, CIA officials protested over how the alleged
uranium connection was being portrayed, so the administration changed it to
attribute it to the British, who had made the assertion in a Sept. 24 dossier.
[By MSNBC.com's Alex Johnson with NBC's Andrea Mitchell.]
