Plame Wilson: Bob Woodward Testifies

Bob Woodward has testified that a WH official told him that Plame Wilson was a CIA officer BEFORE Scooter Libby told Judith Miller.

Woodward Testimony a 'Bombshell' for CIA Leak Case

Woodward's testimony "shows that Libby was not the first government official to tell a reporter the secret identity of a CIA operative".

"Woodward and editors at the Post refused to identify the official to reporters other than to say it was not Libby."

"Woodward's account undermines Fitzgerald's argument that Libby was involved in a scheme to discredit Plame Wilson by leaking her name and identity to the press".

Fitz has asserted that Libby started a chain of phone calls to disclose the info to a reporter.

"For the last two years, every reader and reporter in America has been adjusting his Valerie Plame timetable, trying to figure out who in the government leaked her name to whom and in what order."

"Meanwhile, Woodward was sitting mum in the catbird seat, the scoop trapped in his bill. The information would still be there if Woodward's source—unnamed in the Post account and unnamed by Woodward in his "statement"—hadn't told Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the conversation on Nov. 3."

"Fitzgerald, as the Post reported, only learned of Woodward's conversation with the source because the source … burned Woodward."

"Bob Woodward apologized today to The Washington Post's executive editor for failing to tell him for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of those leaks mushroomed into a national scandal."

"I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

"I told Walter Pincus, a reporter at The Post, without naming my source, that I understood Wilson's wife worked at the CIA as a WMD analyst. Pincus does not recall that I passed this information on."

"He asked me to keep him out of the reporting and I agreed to do that," Pincus said today.

Ben Bradlee Defends Woodward.

Is Woodward the only reporter who "knew about a Wilson and wife connection and kept quiet"?

Larry King show Oct 27, 2005:

ISIKOFF: I talked to a source at the White House late this afternoon who told me that Bob is going to have a bombshell in tomorrow's paper identifying the Mr. X source who is behind the whole thing.

WOODWARD: I wish I did have a bombshell. I don't even have a firecracker.

Sure, Bob.

Text of Woodward's statement.

--LynZee