news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051017/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_leak_investigation
Dick Cheney's chief of staff in New York Times reporter Judith Miller 's interview notes is incorrect, offering prosecutors a potential lead t o tracking the bad information to its original source.
CIA 's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) uni t Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit i n the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA 's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to thr ee people familiar with her work for the spy agency. The three all spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the current secrecy requirements of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury inve stigation into the leak of Plame's identity in 2003 to the media.
It could suggest Libby thought Plame was not an underco ver spy, and therefore couldn't have knowingly revealed her occupation, or that he got his information from uninformed sources, they said. "The fact that the information is inaccurate may make it of even greater interest to the grand jury than accurate information," said Lance Cole, former Democratic counsel to the Senate Whitewater Committee and now a l aw professor at Penn State Dickinson School of law. "Accurate information presumably can come from any number of sources. If he got it from a particular document or in a meeting and that document o r notes of that meeting are the only place that the inaccuracy is presen t, then that establishes the source," Cole said. Danny Coulson, a former top FBI official who conducted several investigat ions of leaks, said the possibility that Libby passed on wrong informati on to a reporter may indicate he didn't get his information from a credi ble, official source. "What it tells me is he probably got his information from dinner talk," C oulson said. Presidential aides "had access to the official information and if they had used that, you would think they would have had the right stuff." Even if Libby or other White House aides did not knowingly reveal Plame's covert identity, the prosecutor could consider other charges such as th e mishandling of classified information, false statements and obstructio n of justice, lawyers have said. In her story published Sunday recounting her legal battle and imprisonmen t for refusing to testify earlier, Miller described her breakfast meetin g conversation on July 8, 2003 with Libby and the point at which it turn ed to Plame. "I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr Wilson's wife worked for Winpac," she wrote. "In fact, I told the grand jury that when Mr Libby indicated that Ms Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercov er operative." With the investigation nearing an end, Bush on Monday declined to say whe ther he would remove an aide under indictment. "I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation." He commented in response to reporters' questions during a meeting with Bulgaria's president, Georgi Parvanov. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, as well as Libby have been quest ioned by the grand jury. Rove last week made his fourth and final appear ance, where he was pressed on conflicts between his account and those of other witnesses. At the Pentagon, officials also looked into Miller's claim that she had a security clearance while working as an embedded reporter during the Ira q war, shortly before her conversations with Libby. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he was unaware of Miller having a s ecurity clearance. He said security clearances are covered by privacy la ws, so he couldn't talk about it.
Afghanistan wars signed ground rules in which they agreed not to make public sensitiv e or secret information that they learned while with the unit. "For a security clearance you have to go through any number of specific b ackground investigative checks, and there are different agencies that do those. And depending on the level of clearance that's required, there's certain paperwork that has to be filled out and it has to be adjudicate d," said Whitman. He said commanders can't simply give a reporter a security clearance whil e in the field with the unit.
President Bush listens to a reporter's question on the investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame and about t he involvement of two of Bush's aides, Karl Rove and I Lewis Libby, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. The identities of those who disclosed Plame's name are vital pieces of evidence for prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald as he tries to track down lea kers in the Bush administration.
The informati on contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewr itten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associ ated Press.
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