By: Joe Strupp Ben Bradlee, the former Washington Post executive editor, is standing by his story: He did not inform a Vanity Fair reporter that Richard Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, was Post reporter Bob Woodward's source in the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case.
A spokesman for Vanity Fair has said that the author of the article, Marie Brenner, tape recorded Bradlee's comments.
But Bradlee told E&P today, "I didn't do it, I didn't say the source ... What she's got on tape is that there was a fair inference to draw and evidently she equates that to my saying it was Armitage, rather than just an inference to draw. You can draw an inference that is wrong or unfair."
Bradlee said that "of course" he knows the name of the source, but not from Woodward, and he would not reveal it.
He added, referring to the Vanity Fair claim, "I couldn't believe the Post put it on page 2 (Tuesday) with a headline that long. I don't know what the Post is worried about."
Armitage has not commented.
Woodward has written that the person who told him about Plame was a former or current government official and longtime source. Many believe Woodward's source was also Robert Novak's so-called "second source." Novak has written that this person is a government official who was not a "partisan gunslinger."
(A full report on E&P's conversation with Bradlee will soon appear.)
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