WASHINGTON — In the middle of June 2003, when Washington Post editor Bob Woodward sat down with a top source at the State Department, he had a question.
The capital was buzzing over a public attack by a former U.S. diplomat on one of the claims President Bush had made to justify the Iraq war. For support, the diplomat was citing a fact-finding trip he'd made to Africa on orders from CIA officials.
"Why would they send him?" a puzzled Woodward asked, referring to the ex-envoy, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had been dispatched to Niger to assess the nuclear intentions of Saddam Hussein.
"Because his wife's a [expletive] analyst at the agency," Richard L. Armitage, then the deputy secretary of State, replied.
Woodward -- and his taperecorded, expletive-laden exchange with Armitage -- became a focus Monday at the trial of a top White House aide accused of lying to investigators about how the name of a CIA agent became public.
Woodward and a parade of other prominent Washington journalists have been called to testify about how they learned of the agent, Valerie Plame, married to Wilson. All said they had been told about Plame and her CIA role by government officials other than the defendant, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Monday's testimony came as Libby's lawyers launched a defense portraying their client as a scapegoat in a three-year federal probe into who leaked the identity of Plame, an agency analyst specializing in arms proliferation.
Whatever its value to the defense may prove to be, the journalists' testimony made one thing clear: At a time when the Bush administration's rationale for going to war was coming under increasing attack, officials in the White House and beyond were doing a lot of talking to reporters about Plame -- even though it can be against the law to divulge the identity of covert intelligence agents.
In addition to Woodward, syndicated newspaper columnist Robert Novak testified Monday. Novak -- whose disclosure of Plame's name and CIA connection in a July 14, 2003, piece kicked off the original leak furor -- said he had heard about Plame from White House political guru Karl Rove, as well as from Armitage.
Reporter Walter Pincus of the Washington Post also took the stand, saying then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer had given him the information.
The government has not alleged that Libby was the first person to divulge Plame's identity nor that he was the first to leak information that was published about her.
