The Daily Background

Only recently has it been confirmed that Richard Armitage was Robert Novak’s source for Valerie Plame’s identity (thanks to the Associated Press), but a new book is going to reveal that the State Department knew this– and more– for years.

According to an upcoming book Hubris, coauthored by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek Magazine, the State Department was aware that Richard Amritage (former Deputy Department of State during the time Plame’s name was leaked), was Robert Novak’s and Bob Woodward’s source. Raw Story:

“The disclosures about Armitage, gleaned from interviews with colleagues, friends and lawyers directly involved in the case, underscore one of the ironies of the Plame investigation: that the initial leak, seized on by administration critics as evidence of how far the White House was willing to go to smear an opponent, came from a man who had no apparent intention of harming anyone,” the article continues.

The Newsweek article (included in previous link) relating to it continues:

Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn’t thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame’s identity. “I’m afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing,” he later told Carl Ford Jr., State’s intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had “slipped up” and told Novak more than he should have. “He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f—ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat,” Ford recalls in “Hubris,” to be published in early September by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.

[…]
Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged. Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame’s covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.

Okay, I see what they’re saying about Armitage being a gossip and not actually having sinister intentions about leaking Plame’s identity to the press. However, how did Armitage find out? It was chitchat, that Armitage was hearing? Does it occur to anybody that perhaps, just perhaps, the Vice President’s office, which we already know was obsessed with Plame’s husband, Amb Wilson, and purposely floated Plame’s identity around to use a “well-known gossip” to get the word out there?

And then Libby started floating it around too because they got impatient? This might sound conspiracy theorist-like or perhaps too complicated to be true, but let’s remember that Novak– the original person who leaked Plame’s name in the first place– had multiple sources for his scoop. It’s not as if it started with Armitage and ended at Armitage.

How did Armitage find out in the first place? Evidently Fitzgerald investigated him and found that he didn’t know too much about Plame, specifically that her status was undercover, so the office of the Special Prosecutor never charged him with the crime. So who told Armitage? As Deputy Secretary of State, he wasn’t exactly in a position to know the names of every covert CIA officer and who their spouses were.

Filed under: Plame Leak, Z-TDB Blog