VALERIE PLAME is the maiden name of the wife of Joseph Wilson, the retired diplomat who attacked the Bush Administration for mentioning Niger uranium. Some web-logs are in a lather because Robert Novak wrote:

          Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. ''I will not answer any question about my wife,'' Wilson told me.

          The answer may lie in an attempt by mid-level CIA people to try to kill the Niger story. If they were on record already as being skeptical of the British claims about Niger, then it was important to their careers that the story be squelched. If Mr. Wilson were sent, he would come up with nothing, and that could be cited in a report to Mr.Cheney without mentioning exactly who Wilson was and what he did.

          If Mrs. Wilson works in the office that analyzes weapons of mass destruction, as seems to be the case from my survey of web-logs, then she would know Mr. Wilson could fill the role of story squelcher. She herself is a "counter- proliferation official", after all. That, apparently, is what was leaked to Mr. Novak.

          I don't know why the CIA would confirm the story to Novak. And it is odd that the CIA would later confirm to Newsday that Mrs. Wilson worked there, and volunteer that she worked "in an undercover capacity". And what does "undercover capacity" mean? It sounded to me as if she works in the analysis division. I doubt she's a spy. Rather, she's like the vast majority of CIA employees, a civil-service worker who processes data (or perhaps she's an administrator).

          Maybe CIA people wanted it to sound as if the Administration was betraying our covert agents to their deaths, and so contacted Newsday and told them that since she works for the CIA, it would be fair to say she works "undercover", as she works every day in a building that requires a tough security clearance. This would be a counter-leak, retaliation for the first leak, which would be most damaging to the careers of the CIA people who sent Mr. Wilson to Niger.

Any other ideas?

UPDATE, AUGUST 28. Mark Kleiman has a good summary of the story and the law. Professor Kleiman also reports, from a transcript that Ambassador Wilson now blames Karl Rove for the leak and says he should go to jail for it.

It turns out that Newsday probably got their news from David Corn in the Nation on July 16. He slides without comment from saying that Mrs. Wilson (Valerie Plame) works from the CIA to saying that she is a covert operative. My guess is that he didn't even realize there was a difference. If he did, and he's right, then *he* is the one who has revealed the identity of a covert operative. I doubt she does much cloak and dagger work, though; Corn reveals she is the mother of 3-year-old twins!

Senator Schumer has called for an investigation. His press release makes the mistaken claim that "the unauthorized disclosure of information relating to the identity of an American intelligence official is a crime." No, it *can be* a crime to reveal the identity of a *covert* employee. Most employees aren't covert. Also, recall that the Novak story did not say she was a covert employee. The David Corn story did.

Schumer says

"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I�ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent�s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."

UPDATE, AUGUST 29. I regret having gotten caught up in this, given the time it takes, but Mark Kleiman wrote me a good, conscientious email catching me in a mistake and bringing up points I hadn't addressed, so I'll correct and elaborate. Many of the ideas below (though certainly not the conclusions from them, which are usually opposite) are his.

Further details on evidence as to whether Mrs. Wilson is a covert operative for the CIA. Mr. Corn's July 16 article reports that she is "a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm". The July 22 Newsday article says

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."

"We paid his [Wilson's] air fare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.

I was wrong, though, to say there was no evidence except Wilson's that Mrs. Wilson was covert-- this "senior intelligence official" also says it. (And I read that very article back in July, so I just forgot--my fault!) I don't find the evidence conclusive, though. The official may have lied, or the reporter may have misinterpreted him (maybe she works in the Directorate of Operations but is not undercover, or maybe she is just a consultant whose main job is as an energy analyst, or maybe she is "undercover" but that is technically different from "covert",...)

Anyway, that official would seem to be as fitting a target of investigation as the "two senior Administration officials" who simply said she worked for the CIA (though I note that Novak never actually said that the officials were his source that she works for the CIA, just that the CIA asked her (from what Corn said, an energy industry consultant) to talk with Mr. Wilson:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

It could end up that Mrs. Wilson actually is a spy, going on covert missions to dangerous foreign countries or personally meeting with covert people who do (a more likely,and equally important possibility). But I don't see the evidence yet, and remain skeptical.

Time magazine, by the way, says that Wilson's report actually did report one overture by Iraq to Niger:

Government officials are not only privately disputing the genesis of Wilson's trip, but publicly contesting what he found. Last week Bush Administration officials said that Wilson's report reinforced the president's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. They say that when Wilson returned from Africa in Feb. 2002, he included in his report to the CIA an encounter with a former Nigerien government official who told him that Iraq had approached him in June 1999, expressing interest in expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The Administration claims Wilson reported that the former Nigerien official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.

...

Wilson tells the story differently and in a crucial respect. He says the official in question was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary who inquired if the official would meet with an Iraqi about "commercial" sales --- an offer he declined. Wilson dismisses CIA Director George Tenet's suggestion in his own mea culpa last week that the meeting validates the President's State of the Union claim: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the president alleged? These guys really need to get serious."

It's also worth going back to my July 14 post on the original Wilson attack on the Administration, before the fuss about his wife. It's relevant to that fuss because it shows Wilson's attitude, and his distorted and personalized view of situations.

[ http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.07.28a.htm ]

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