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Woodward admission raises questions in leak case

BY TOM BRUNE | WASHINGTON BUREAU

November 17, 2005

WASHINGTON - A Bush administration official's belated admission in recent weeks that he told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame raises new questions in the special counsel's two-year-old leak investigation.

That admission ends two years of secrecy between source and reporter, and in the process raises concerns about Woodward's role as a journalist, the special counsel's probe and the perjury indictment of former aide I. Lewis Libby, as well as the White House's cooperation in the investigation.

Attorneys for Libby called the revelation a "bombshell" for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's case against their client, but attorneys familiar with the probe said it might not be enough to get Libby off.

Yesterday began with Woodward's statement in the Washington Post that he had testified under oath about an unnamed official telling him in June 2003 about Plame. And it ended with Woodward apologizing to the Post's top editor, Leonard Downie, for not telling him about it for two years.

"I apologized because I should have told him much sooner," Woodward told the Post. "I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

Until now, Woodward had not been connected to the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity, which her husband, Joseph Wilson, has said was a White House attempt to undercut his criticism of its pre-war Iraq intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

But Woodward said in a statement published yesterday that he had testified in a lawyer's office about parts of interviews with three current or former Bush officials that related to the outing of Plame.

He said Fitzgerald contacted him Nov. 3, after one of the officials notified Fitzgerald about telling Woodward that "Wilson's wife worked for the CIA" as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction.

The timing of that interview, mid-June 2003, would make the unnamed official the first to tell a reporter about Plame, not Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff.

Ted Wells, one of Libby's attorneys, said Woodward's disclosure undercut Fitzgerald's five-count indictment charging Libby with lying when he said he learned about Plame from reporters, rather than the CIA, State Department and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Wells said the disclosure shows Fitzgerald's statement at his Oct. 28 news conference that Libby was the first official to tell a reporter about Plame "was totally inaccurate."

Fitzgerald said Libby was the "first known" official to do it, however.

Wells added that Woodward said in two interviews in June 2003 that Libby did not mention Plame, undermining Fitzgerald's case that Libby sought to discredit Wilson.

Floyd Abrams, who represents The New York Times in the leak case, said, "I don't think it seems to have much effect on the core of the charge against Mr. Libby."

The identity of the official who spoke with Woodward is unknown. But the official's decision to come forward in recent weeks raises the issue of whether other officials have withheld information and whether the White House is aware of them.

The White House declined to comment. In October 2003, President George W. Bush pledged cooperation with the investigation, and investigators requested and subpoenaed all records of contacts with reporters.