The One and Only Omegavegeta wrote:
So you're saying one of the people at the meeting 18 months prior to novak's article told novak?
Well. I don't think they ran out and told him. I think they simply knew since they were at the meeting.
I imagine it went more like this:
Novak is investigating Wilson's trip to Niger. An obvious point to start from is the meeting at which Wilson was briefed on the trip in the first place. It's reasonable to expect that he might have gone to members of the State Department and asked some basic stuff like: "Who was at the meeting?" and "Who set up the meeting?". Since the names of the people in attendance would not have been classified (I'm not aware that any aspect of that meeting was classified, it wasn't exactly a covert operation after all), there would have been no reason for the INR guys at State not to give Novak a list of the people there. That list would have included employees of the State Department, Joe Wilson, and employees of the CIA, including one Valerie Plame.
At this point, Novak knows of a woman named Valerie Plame who works at the CIA and who seemingly set up the meeting (she makes introductions and leaves, which is a bit unusual). Whether she actually did or not is irrelevant. What matters is that her role in the trip is unclear, and Novak (being an investigative reporter) is going to be interested in figuring out what exactly she had to do with all of this. I imagine after some amount of digging on Valerie Plame and getting next to nothing, he would eventually realize that Plame is the maiden name for Valerie Wilson. Hmmm...
That's reasonable supposition IMO. The next bit is a bit more out on a limb, but explains a lot:
Novak needs to confirm his suspicion before writing a story though. He goes to the INR guys who were at the meeting with a picture of Valerie Wilson and asks "Is this the woman who made introductions at the meeting?". Bam! The outting is complete.
Alternatively, it's someone at the State department who puts it together independantly (INR does stand for "Investigation and Research", so that's not unreasonable). They know Novak's looking into the identity of this woman. Perhaps they realized this based on his earlier questions about the meeting and that spurred them on into investigating her themselves.
Either way (or perhaps through a completely different method), at some point both the INR and Novak know that Valerie Plame the CIA operative is also Valerie Wilson, wife of Joe Wilson. From there it's just a matter of what order various people in Washington were told...
Note, that Rove's involvement is completely superfluous to the trail of information. There's zero evidence that he was ever "in the know" as to her NOC status, nor ever in a position to out her. Whether he found out from the state department memo, or from Novak calling him, or Novak talking to any of a number of other staff and it getting spread around is irrelevant. Who Rove told after learning himself is irrelevant. The "leak" occurred long before Rove even comes remotely into the picture.
It's not illegal to reveal that someone is an employee of the CIA. It's only illegal to do that if you know that person is a NOC. There's no evidence that *anyone* involved in this other then Valerie Plame herself knew she was a NOC. That's why I tend to think she's the one responsible for the leak.
She got sloppy, screwed up, and revealed her identity and employment to people who weren't cleared to know it. Seems pretty straightforward to me...
Edited, Fri Oct 21 17:52:04 2005 by gbaji