Armitage triggered CIA leak case

NEW YORK: Former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard L Armitage has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically-laden criminal investigation in what became known as the CIA leak case, a lawyer involved in the probe said.

He has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency officer, 'The New York Times' quoted the lawyer and other associates of Armitage as saying.

In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, ‘The Times’ said Armitage disclosed casually to Novak that Wilson worked for the CIA at the end of an interview in his State Department office.

Armitage knew that because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.

Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Wilson after an inquiry from I Lewis Libby Jr, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby's inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in ‘The New York Times’ by Nicholas D Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in ‘The Washington Post’ by Walter Pincus.

The two articles reported on a trip by a former ambassador to Africa sponsored by the CIA to check reports that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium to help with its nuclear arms programme. Neither article identified the ambassador, but ‘The Times’ said it was known inside the government that he was Joseph C Wilson, Wilson's husband.

White House officials wanted to know how much of a role Wilson had in selecting him for the assignment.

She was a covert employee, and after Novak printed her identity, the agency requested an investigation to see whether her name had been leaked illegally.

Some administration critics, the paper noted, said her name had been made public in a campaign to punish Wilson, who had written in a commentary in 'The Times' that his investigation in Africa led him to believe that the Bush administration had twisted intelligence to justify an attack on Iraq.

A special prosecutor Patrick J Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate but he did not bring charges in connection with laws that prohibit the willful disclosure of the identity of a CIA officer.

But he did indict Libby on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, saying Libby had testified untruthfully to a grand jury and federal agents when he said he learned about Wilson's role at the agency from reporters rather than from several officials, including Cheney.