Another Scoop from 'Hubris': Plame Was Working on WMD

By: E&P Staff Two weeks ago it was an excerpt from the just-published book "Hubris" in Newsweek that outed Richard Armitrage as the key source for columnist Robert Novak in the Plame/CIA leak case. Now another scoop from the book, this time at the Web site for The Nation magazine, posted this afternoon, unravels the surprising mystery of exactly what Valerie Plame Wilson was working on at the CIA before she was outed by Novak.

By revealing her identity, Armitage, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby harmed her career and put vital intelligence at risk, suggests co-author David Corn of The Nation. The book is also written by Newsweek's Michael Isikoff.

Here is how Corn describes the latest revelation in an e-mail:

"She was operations chief of the Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit of the Counterproliferation Division of the clandestine Directorate of Operations. For the two years prior to her outing, Valerie Wilson worked to gather intelligence that would support the Bush White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was loaded with WMDs.

"This means that Armitage--as well as Karl Rove and Scooter Libby--leaked classified information about a CIA officer whose job it had been to look for evidence of Saddam's WMD programs. During this part of her career, Valerie Wilson traveled overseas to monitor operations she and her staff at JTFI were mounting. She was no analyst, no desk-jockey, no paper-pusher. She was in charge of running critical covert operations.

"Some Bush-backers have dismissed the CIA/Plame leak as unimportant and claimed that Valerie Wilson was an analyst and not truly an undercover CIA officer. In an October 1, 2003 column, Novak reported she was 'an analyst, not in covert operations.'

"'Hubris' and The Nation article, citing CIA sources, disclose that she was in covert operations and that--ironically--she had spent two years trying to find proof of the administration's claims that Iraq posed a WMD threat. She and the Joint Task Force on Iraq, of course, came up empty-handed. 'Hubris' and The Nation piece also report new revelations that undermine the charge that Valerie Wilson sent her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, on his trip to Niger."

In the article, Corn writes, concerning that latter point: "In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."

The Nation site is at www.thenation.com.