Whistle Ass / George Bush 2004

Leak of Agent's Name Causes Exposure of CIA Front Firm

By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 4, 2003; Page A03

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40012-2003Oct3.html

Wilson will give reporter names to FBI

Oct. 1— The former ambassador who accused the White House of leaking the identity of his CIA officer wife to the press says Washington reporters told him that senior White House adviser Karl Rove said his wife was "fair game."

The ambassador, Joseph Wilson, said he plans to give the names of the reporters to the FBI, which is conducting a full-blown investigation of the possible leak.

"I will be revealing the names of everybody who called me and cited White House sources or cited people specifically," Wilson said in an interview with Nightline's Ted Koppel.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/nightline/US/CIAleak031001.html

KARL ROVE definately being looked at as possible source

...Under US law, it is a serious crime to reveal the identity of a covert US intelligence official, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and $50,000 (£31,250) in fines.

If Mr Rove was implicated, it would seriously damage the president's standing at the start of his re-election campaign and rob him of an electoral mastermind who orchestrated his rise to the Texas governorship and then the presidency.

One veteran of the Clinton administration compared it to the Hutton inquiry. "In the Kelly case there's a body but no crime. Here there's no body but there is a crime," he said.

Ms Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador who in July accused the White House of misleading the nation over claims of Iraq's attempts to buy uranium in Africa. In a New York Times commentary he said he had been sent to Niger to check such claims in 2002 and found them to be baseless...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1053191,00.html

ORIGINAL NEWSDAY ARTICLE SITES NOVAK'S ARTICLE THAT OUTED CIA OPERATIVE: Way Back in July

By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
New York Newsday
July 21, 2003.

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview...

http://foi.missouri.edu/voicesdissent/columnistnames.html