New questions about who outed Valerie

Apparent meeting with couple discussing Niger violated CIA code

In violation of CIA regulations that bar contact with reporters without permission, Joseph Wilson's agency-employed wife Valerie Plame apparently accompanied him to a breakfast meeting with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof in which they discussed the ambassador's controversial mission to Niger one month before Plame allegedly was "outed" by Robert Novak.

In a WND column, investigative reporter Jack Cashill points to a "stunning admission" by Wilson in a January 2004 Vanity Fair magazine story that apparently has been overlooked.

The article by reporter Vicky Ward says:

In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him.
Cashill says if "his wife" refers not to Kristof's spouse but to Plame, "which it almost assuredly does," Wilson "has implicated Plame in a serious transgression."

Cashill points out that Wilson, himself, wrote in the preface to the paperback version of his book, "The Politics of Truth," that, "As an employee of the CIA, she could have no contact with the press without prior approval."

Sitting in at a breakfast with a Times reporter in which her husband discusses a CIA trip that she recommended "certainly qualifies as 'contact,'" Cashill writes. Citing the Vanity Fair article, the online reference source Wikipedia interprets "his wife" as Plame, stating in a timeline: "3 May, 2003: Wilson, Plame and Kristof meet for breakfast. Wilson tells Kristof about his trip to Niger, on the condition that Kristof not name Wilson as his source."

Cashill points out that at this breakfast, "Wilson began planting the seed that the forged Iraq-Niger uranium documents, about which little was still known, were the very same ones that he had allegedly discredited in February 2002."

Kristof wrote May 6, 2003, in the first article to result from a Wilson leak, "The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted � except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway."

But Cashill notes that in Wilson's preface to his book, he denies any claim to having debunked the forgeries and dismisses the Kristof remark as a "badly worded reference."

Cashill says this protest would carry more weight if several other reporters to whom Wilson leaked had not made comparable claims, including Walter Pincus of The Washington Post and reporters from The New Republic.