Armitage was just one of Novak's sources. He had two others, including Karl Rove. Rove and Libby were talking to other reporters about Wilson being married to Plame before Novak first wrote the column that caused all the controversy. What is interesting about the new book is that it reveals that both Armitage and his boss, Colin Powell, knew that Armitage was one of Novak's sources. Both of them let the White House take all the flack for it, even as the two had notified the special prosecutor of Armitage's role in the leak.

Isikoff and Corn don't support that sequence of events. In the Newsweek article, they identify the Rove and Libby contacts coming *after* the Armitage leak.

Isikoff and Corn have every motivation to identify the Plame leak as intentional by the Bush administration so as to confirm the left-wing narrative of the incident. Instead, they've pretty clearly shown the initial leak was unintentional--by someone who was no ally of the White House hawks.

While Armitage may have simply been gossipping, the WH was playing another game. Eric and John Podhoretz may want to view the Administrations efforts as simply trying to "point out that Joseph Wilson was chosen to go to Africa through nepotism," others see those efforts as a nasty crusade to undermine Joseph Wilson's credibility as a war critic. After all, CIA officials angrily denied that Plame suggested the trip and also challenged the accuracy of the memo that said she did. And it was Karl Rove who confirmed the classified info to Novakula and then went on to leak it to Time's Matt Cooper. Scooter Libby confirmed it for Cooper and then went on to leak it to Judy Miller of the NY Times.

All the while, the WH lied about Rove and Libby being leakers, and then broke its pledge to fire anyone who was involved in the leaks.

Resolved? Let's see what happens when the Libby trial starts in January. And there's the Wilson's civil suit, too. How ironic that their attorney plans to "use a legal precedent that allowed President Bill Clinton to be sued while in office to force Vice President Dick Cheney and presidential adviser Karl Rove to testify in a lawsuit..."

Eric,

I don't question that Armitage leaked first; however, Novak spoke to two other sources, including Rove after he spoke to Armitage but before he wrote the first column, who confirmed that Plame was Wilson's wife and that she worked for the CIA. It appears that there was a classified memo that provided the info to people in the WH, including Rove and Libby, independent of Armitage leaking the info to Novak. Libby and Rove didn't learn from Armitage. Rove and Libby were sharing the info with other reporters before Novak broke the story.

Wait. So Wilson's assertions about there being no Iraq/Niger connection aren't invalid because of the facts that he stated, they're invalid because he is married to Valerie Plame?

greg

Greg, no one is making that argument here. Whether Wilson was a qualified and/or unbiased investigator into the Iraq/Niger matter is quite beside the point when it comes to how Plame's CIA position was made public.

Anyway, it's abundantly clear that, just as nothing could dissuade some Republicans in the 90's from believing that Bill Clinton was selling our national security to China for political donations, nothing will dissuade some Democrats now from believing that George W. Bush intentionally burned a covert CIA agent.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Just to make one thing "abundantly clear."

Did the Administration intentionally "intentionally burn a covert CIA agent?" I don't think so. I believe the Plame leak was part of a broader effort to discredit Joe Wilson as a war critic.

Bush gave the VP the job to defend his Adminisrtration from Wilson's criticisms. I assume that Bush was aware that part of that defense involved would involve attacking the messenger. I doubt that he was aware of the whisper campaign, however, and I don't even know that those whispering Plame's name and job to reporters were aware that this was a criminal act.

What I do know is that attacking the messenger is nasty politics and in this case the whisper campaign was VERY foolish, very clumsy and illegal. And that if it had taken place in 2000 and involved Clinton and Gore, conservatives would have been screaming for their heads. In the case of Bush, Cheney, conservatives didn't even offer a slap on the wrist.

Excuse us for noticing.

What we should be noticing is that a matter which should have taken a week or two to resolve has taken a year or two or three along with a trial that now seems completely pointless. How many millions of dollars down the drain for this sort of debacle?

I don't know, Anonymous, how much did Ken Starr spend?

Mr. Clinton's lawyer (an Indiana boy)drove up the costs of the Investigation and the serial lying of Mr. Clinton and his delays also cost time and money. No such case in this matter. The prosecutor knew all he really needed to know after he chatted with Mr. Novak. Like I said, it took a week or so to know what we wanted to know.

The prosecutor knew all he really needed to know after he chatted with Mr. Novak. Like I said, it took a week or so to know what we wanted to know.

Oh I dont know, I would love to know why Libby was commiting perjury the supposed "real crime" of the Clinton investigation.

One thing I dont understand is the characterization of Armitage as somehow distinct and separate from the administration. Wasnt he appointed by G.W.B? Wikipedia says that he was a signer of the PNAC letter to Clinton urging invasion of Iraq back in 1998? Is this rue and if so how can he be treated now as if he were someone outside the administration? The meaning being given to the fact that he may have first leaked escapes me. I also cannot understand how it is insignificat for Rove to "confirm" the information when without the confirmation Novak likely would not have published.