Beltway Whodunit: An Agent, a Secret and (at Least One) Big Mouth

July, 12, 2005 — -- Two years after undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame was "outed" in a column by Robert Novak, the investigation into how, and why, her name dropped out of the government's classified files appears to be nearing an end. Here's a look at the case so far, and what it all means.

On July 6, 2003, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson published an editorial in The New York Times challenging President Bush's State of the Union claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase nuclear materials from an African country.

Wilson wrote that he'd been sent by the government to Africa in 2002 to check out rumors that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger in the late 1990s. After a nine-day investigation, Wilson said he told the CIA and the State Department it was "highly doubtful" the sale ever happened.

Having turned up nothing on his trip, Wilson said he was surprised to hear Bush mention the alleged sale in his speech, and challenged the administration to reveal the evidence behind the claim. He suggested that if his report from Niger simply had been ignored, "then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses." (The White House later backed off the uranium claim, blaming the CIA and British intelligence for providing the information.)

About a week later, Novak wrote a column identifying Wilson's wife, Plame, as a CIA operative. In fact, Plame didn't just work for the CIA, she was an undercover agent, and the disclosure not only blew her cover, but also -- Wilson claimed -- put them at risk. Wilson soon suggested the administration had leaked his wife's name to undermine his credibility (for more on this, read on).

After months of pressure, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appointed Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel to investigate the leak of Plame's identity. For more than a year, Fitzgerald has been presenting evidence to a grand jury in Washington.

It all comes down to one person: Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.

There have long been murmurings that Rove spilled the beans on Plame, but the White House repeatedly has denied that he had anything to do with the case. Bush told reporters in June 2004 that if someone in his administration had leaked Plame's name, he'd fire them. White House spokesman Scott McClellan several times emphatically insisted that Rove wasn't involved with the leak.