WASHINGTON — In the early 1980s, Sharon Scranage, a clerk for the CIA in Ghana, committed what in retrospect was a historic act of betrayal.
The seven-year agency employee, with a top-secret security clearance, was charged with leaking secrets to her boyfriend, a suspected operative of the Ghanaian national intelligence service. Described by friends as a highly religious person who had never been in trouble, she pleaded guilty in 1985 to disclosing the identity of covert agents.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday July 16, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 68 words Type of Material: Correction
Karl Rove -- A photo caption in some editions of Friday's Section A, citing a lawyer for White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, said Rove talked to a reporter about CIA agent Valerie Plame to discourage the reporter from writing about her status. In fact, the lawyer said Rove talked to the reporter about Plame to discourage the reporter from writing a story about Plame's husband.
It was the only time anyone had been prosecuted under a 1982 federal law called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
The law is at the center of the debate over the unmasking of CIA operative Valerie Plame, and the possible involvement of Karl Rove, who is a White House deputy chief of staff, and other Bush administration figures.
Rove's lawyer said he was confident that the long-dormant law could not be applied to his client. History may be on his side.
But some legal experts said that too little was known about what Rove had known about Plame and when he had known it, and that it was therefore too soon to judge whether President Bush's close aide was in the clear. In any event, they said, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald may pursue other charges, such as perjury or obstruction of justice, or he may decide against seeking any indictments.
Thursday marked the second anniversary of the publication of Plame's name in a syndicated column by Robert Novak. For more than 18 months, a Justice Department investigation led by Fitzgerald has been seeking to identify the administration sources used by Novak and other journalists covering the story. That led to the jailing last week of New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to cooperate with the prosecutor.
Rove has been connected to the case through a conversation he had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper days before the Novak column appeared, and through Cooper's subsequent e-mail to his editors indicating Rove had identified Plame to him in a brief phone conversation, though apparently not naming Plame. Cooper testified Wednesday about his conversation with Rove for 2 1/2 hours before a federal grand jury.
Among the legal tools available to Fitzgerald is the 1982 law, a reaction to efforts in the 1970s to publicly identify clandestine operatives around the world. One disaffected CIA agent, Philip Agee, published two books that named more than 1,000 alleged operatives. Hundreds of others were unmasked in the Covert Action Information Bulletin, a publication whose purpose was to undermine U.S. intelligence agencies' ability to operate secretly.
