Wilson disclosed that a year earlier he had traveled to Niger on an assignment for the CIA to investigate those uranium allegations and found them baseless. The piece prompted questions that still persist about why the administration made such claims amid evidence that they were unfounded.
Eight days later, syndicated columnist Novak wrote a piece defending the White House and arguing that Wilson's trip to Niger was done not at the behest of the administration but was arranged by his wife, Valerie Plame, "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
The disclosure of her name and job attracted little attention at the time. The CIA, as obligated by law, referred the leak to the Justice Department later in July. But it didn't complete the paperwork until mid-September. It was the disclosure of the completed referral over the weekend that triggered the uproar.
By some accounts, the administration approached a number of news organizations in July, dangling details on Wilson's wife's position at the agency. The Washington Post on Sunday quoted "an administration aide" as saying that six reporters received cold calls from administration officials.
The Post quoted Wilson as saying that NBC's Andrea Mitchell got one of the calls. "I would not discuss sources," Mitchell said when asked about that Monday.
But speaking on condition of anonymity, one top political and communications strategist close to the White House expressed skepticism that any senior White House officials leaked the information.
"It's not how anybody leaks," the strategist said. "You know us. We're pros. If you want to leak, you call one reporter."
On CNN, where Novak serves as a commentator, he said Monday, "Nobody in the White House called me to leak me this." Instead, Novak said he was interviewing a "senior administration official" who told him of Wilson's wife's identity, and that he confirmed it with another administration source.
Observers in Washington have expressed bafflement that administration officials would play such high-risk politics for such dubious payback: gambling that identifying the wife of a retired diplomat would somehow taint the diplomat's report throwing cold water on the uranium allegations. But Wilson remains convinced that the leak was designed to punish him.
"That's just purely reprehensible," he said in an interview Monday. He said he believes the Bush White House was "intimately involved in this."
