WASHINGTON: The leak of a CIA agent's identity by White House political aide Karl Rove has sparked a criminal probe and several Democrats have urged president George W Bush to fire or sideline him. Time correspondent Matthew Cooper wrote that Rove did not disclose the woman's name, Valerie Plame, but told him in July 2003 that information would be declassified that would cast doubt on the credibility of her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson.
"Don't get too far out on Wilson," Cooper quoted Rove as saying. Cooper said he had also discussed Wilson and his wife with a top aide to vice-president Dick Cheney.
Wilson took a CIA-funded trip in 2002 to investigate a charge that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa, and later accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the Iraqi weapons threat in its case for war.
"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes," Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1174795.cms
"Don't get too far out on Wilson," Cooper quoted Rove as saying. Cooper said he had also discussed Wilson and his wife with a top aide to vice-president Dick Cheney.
Wilson took a CIA-funded trip in 2002 to investigate a charge that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa, and later accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the Iraqi weapons threat in its case for war.
"So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes," Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1174795.cms
