New Clues in the Plame Mystery

Hmmm...

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

The source, who knows both White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, told me that the two men are much closer than many Washington insiders understand, that they developed a friendship and a working relationship when Bush was recruiting Colin Powell to be Secretary of State.

Novak also contradicted the Armitage scenario on another key point, that Novak supposedly had arranged the interview with the help of longtime Republican operative Kenneth Duberstein. Instead, Novak reported that Armitage's granting of the interview came out of the blue.
"During his quarter of a century in Washington, I had had no contact with Armitage before our fateful interview," Novak wrote in his Sept. 14, 2006, column. "I tried to see him in the first 2 ½ years of the Bush administration, but he rebuffed me - summarily and with disdain, I thought.
"Then, without explanation, in June 2003, Armitage's office said the deputy secretary would see me." [Emphasis added]
Novak dated that call from Armitage's office at about two weeks before Wilson published his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed in the New York Times, entitled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa." The time frame of the call fits with when the White House was initiating a preemptive strike against Wilson's anticipated criticism of Bush's bogus claims about Iraq seeking uranium ore from Niger.
On June 23, 2003, also two weeks before Wilson's article, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, gave an interview to New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Wilson and, according to a later retrospective by the Times, may then have passed on the tip that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.
In other words, just as Bush's operatives were launching their smear campaign against Wilson by briefing "friendly" reporters, Armitage reversed his longstanding refusal to meet with Novak and "without explanation" granted an interview. During that interview, according to Novak, Armitage encouraged him to write about Plame's identity, much as Rove and Libby were doing with other journalists simultaneously.
After the Armitage interview, Novak got confirmation about his highly sensitive tip - a covert CIA officer's identity - from Rove, who - according to my conservative source - had been working behind the scenes sharing sensitive information with Armitage since the earliest days of the Bush administration.More on the story