Richard Armitage

[Mark Buffington 3]

If not today, maybe tommorow...

[RLLD 3,505]

I thought ROve was indicated on this weeks ago...

[ArnieBragg 1]

Official Met With Reporter Around Time of C.I.A. Leak

 

By PHILIP SHENON

Published: August 23, 2006

 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 — The State Department’s No. 2 official met with the reporter Bob Woodward during a period in June 2003 in which Mr. Woodward has said he learned from a confidential source that the wife of a prominent Bush administration critic worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to newly disclosed department records.

 

Also in the Guide The Race for the U.S. House Governors' Races The disclosure of the records — the 2003 appointment calendars of the official, Richard L. Armitage, then deputy secretary of state — appeared quite likely to renew suspicion that he was the first official to tell a reporter about the identity of the covert C.I.A. officer at the center of a politically important leak investigation.

 

The documents, initially obtained by The Associated Press through a Freedom of Information Act request to the State Department, show that Mr. Armitage scheduled a one-hour “private appointment” with Mr. Woodward, the famed Washington Post reporter, on June 13, 2003.

 

Mr. Woodward, who has had extraordinary access to President Bush and his senior aides, set off a frantic guessing game about the leak investigation when he acknowledged last November that a “current or former” administration official had told him about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, in mid-June 2003. That would have been at least several days before any other reporter was known to have learned about Ms. Wilson’s connection to the C.I.A.

 

Benjamin C. Bradlee, the former Post executive editor who guided Mr. Woodward’s reporting on Watergate, has speculated that Mr. Armitage was the “likely source” of the leak; he has said his speculation was not based on information from Mr. Woodward. Ms. Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs in the months before the American invasion of Iraq.

 

Reached by telephone on Tuesday, Mr. Armitage and Mr. Woodward said they had no comment on the scheduled June 2003 meeting. A spokesman for Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the leak investigation, also had no comment.

 

Mr. Armitage, who left the State Department in February 2005, has refused to say if he was the source of information about Ms. Wilson to Mr. Woodward and to Robert D. Novak, the newspaper columnist who first publicly identified her as a C.I.A. employee, in a column on July 14, 2003.

 

The Novak column prompted the C.I.A. to request an inquiry by the Justice Department, which turned the case over to Mr. Fitzgerald.

 

Mr. Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leaking of Ms. Wilson’s name led to the indictment last October of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President ###### Cheney’s former chief of staff. Mr. Libby was accused of obstruction and perjury in his claim to investigators that he had learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity from reporters, not from other government officials.

 

At the time of the indictment, Mr. Fitzgerald described Mr. Libby as the “first known” government official to discuss Ms. Wilson’s C.I.A. connections with a journalist, Judith Miller, then a reporter at The New York Times, in a conversation on June 23, 2003.

 

Mr. Woodward came forward in November to reveal to Mr. Fitzgerald that he, too, had learned about Ms. Wilson and that he had obtained the information in mid-June 2003, before Ms. Miller.

 

He has said that he talked with Mr. Fitzgerald after his source went to the prosecutor to describe the two-year-old conversation. Mr. Woodward has refused to name the source, describing him or her only as a “current or former” Bush administration official. Mr. Woodward has said that the source authorized him to talk to Mr. Fitzgerald, but not to disclose his or her name publicly.

 

In a statement in November, Mr. Woodward said that he had considered the official’s reference to Ms. Wilson to be “casual and offhand” and that “it did not appear to me to be either classified or sensitive.” He said the official had “told me Wilson’s wife worked for the C.I.A. on weapons of mass destruction as a W.M.D. analyst” and that “according to my understanding, an analyst in the C.I.A. is not normally an undercover position.”

 

Mr. Armitage’s calendar shows that he met with Mr. Libby on June 6, 2003, for 15 minutes; the topic of the meeting was not noted. The meeting on June 13 with Mr. Woodward was to be from 2 to 3 p.m. and was identified only as “Private Appointment/Bob Woodward.” A lawyer for Mr. Libby, who is facing trial next year, did not return calls on Tuesday.