Yesterday I wrote about the collapse of one aspect of the cover story knitted by Bush allies in the Plame/CIA leak matter. (See item below.) I noted that Cliff May's early claim that Washington "insiders" knew Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer has not stood the test of time. But May's column--even if wrong--raises some questions relevant for the ongoing investigation.

May maintained that before Bob Novak on July 14, 2003, published a column identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA "operative," a former government official "mentioned" to May the CIA identity of Joseph Wilson's wife "in an offhanded manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

Well, who said this? It seems to me that if a former government official came forward and said, in a convincing fashion, that Valerie Wilson's cover was essentially nonexistent and that her CIA identity was an open secret throughout the capital, then Fitzgerald would have less a case and Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and any other leakers would have less to worry about.

But no such source has come forward. And May has not identified his source. May works for the neoconnish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a pro-Iraq war outfit that features as advisors such ex-government officials as R. James Woolsey (former CIA director), Newt Gingirch, Richard Perle and Bill Kristol. That is, May is surrounded by people with close ties to the White House and the intelligence community. Who can know which one of his comrades, if any of this crowd, shared the supposedly open-secret secret with May?

But if May's account is accurate, it ought to be important for special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigators to discover who told May this. This source might have received information on Valerie Wilson from a current government official (maybe even someone of special interest to Fitzgerald) or from classified sources when s/he worked within the government. This source, then, might possess information quite valuable for Fitzgerald's probe, and s/he might even be a target for Fitzgerald. Has Fitzgerald pursued May?

I recently asked May if he had been contacted by Fitzgerald or had appeared before the grand jury. He told me he had been interviewed by FBI agents. But, he added, he had been asked not to discuss what he had said to them. So he was interviewed by FBI agents but not summoned to the grand jury. Does that mean he did not tell the agents anything of vital importance?

May's acknowledgment of his FBI chat leads to an obvious question: did he reveal his source? If so, did this source tell Fitzgerald what May claims this source told him? If Fitzgerald had indeed learned from May's source that Valerie Wilson's CIA identity was known to "insiders" throughout Washington, would he still have pursued his inquiry so vigorously? But since Fitzgerald still is mounting a fierce investigation, would it be farfetched to assume this source said something different to him than s/he did to May? Or that Fitzgerald did not find the everybody-knew-about-Valerie-Wilson claim credible?

And if May did not reveal his source to the FBI agents, why did Fitzgerald not subpoena him? Could it be that Fitzgerald doesn't believe May's claim. Or does he simply not consider it significant?

So many questions. Yet no answers from Cliff May the insider. Does he stick to his claim that Washington "insiders" knew about Valerie Wilson? That really doesn't matter, for that claim has been undercut (see below). But what might be important is the identity of this ex-government official who was spreading the useful (though disingenuous) line that Valerie Wilson's status as a CIA employee was an open secret.

[Jim Lobe, writing for Alternet, explored the May matter nearly two years ago. Tip of the keyboard for him for first tugging on this very loose thread.]
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By the way, on the question of whether Valerie Wilson was really undercover, blogger Brad Friedman directs my attention to a January 30, 2004 letter that Stanley Moskowitz, director of congressional affairs at the CIA, sent to Representative John Conyers in response to a letter Conyers had sent the CIA four months earlier about the Plame/CIA leak. In his reply to Conyers, Moskowitz noted that the CIA had requested a Justice Department "investigation into the disclosure...of the identity of an employee operating under cover." This would seem to be CIA confirmation that Valerie Wilson was working "under cover" at the CIA even though she was based at headquarters and not conducting James Bond-like black-bag jobs in the Balkans.

But this letter is significant for another reason. In it, Moskowitz told Conyers that the CIA on July 30, 2003--two weeks after the Plame/CIA leak first appeared in Bob Novak's column--"reported to the Criminal Division of DoJ a possible violation of criminal law concerning the unauthorized disclosure of classified information." Once more, here is proof that Valerie Wilson's employment status at the CIA was classified information. (Under U.S. law, the CIA does get to say what is and is not classified.) Which means that when Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told at least two reporters (Novak and Time's Matt Cooper) that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA they were disclosing classified information. Case closed. The Moskowitz letter also suggests that if a crime had been committed in this case it might not necessarily be a violation of the hard-to-violate Intelligence Identities Protection Act. There are other laws concerning the unauthorized release of classified information. Perhaps Fitzgerald is working those angles as well.

Posted by David Corn at July 29, 2005 10:47 AM