The Plame CIA leak scandel began over two years ago, in July of 2003 when journalist Robert Novak wrote a column revealing that Valerie Plame, the wife of former United States Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, was a covert operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who specialized in undercover operations involving weapons of mass destruction.

[kos:Plame_affair|The exposure of Valarie Plame] was done in part as an act of political retribution against Wilson due to Wilson's New York Times editorial in which Wilson challenged the false statement in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address in which the president said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." which was a major component of the justfication to invade Iraq, which was based on forged eviidence.

It has since come to light that Bush's top aide [kos:Karl Rove], Vice-President's Chief-of-Staff [kos:I. Lewis Libby|"Scooter" Libby] and others in the White House were central to leaking the identitity of Valarie Plame as a CIA covert operative.

Journalist Murray Waas has been doing a fantastic job of late, at getting into the corners of the whole Rove/Libby/White House leak scandal. In an article that ran in the Village Voice on Saturday, he points out that Ashcroft and his staff were forced to remove themselves from the investigation of the leak, because Rove's story was so clearly questionable.

Justice Department officials made the crucial decision in late 2003 to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in large part because investigators had begun to specifically question the veracity of accounts provided to them by White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to senior law enforcement officials.

Several of the federal investigators were also deeply concerned that then attorney general John Ashcroft was personally briefed regarding the details of at least one FBI interview with Rove, despite Ashcroft's own longstanding personal and political ties to Rove, the Voice has also learned. The same sources said Ashcroft was also told that investigators firmly believed that Rove had withheld important information from them during that FBI interview.

During his initial interview with the FBI, in the fall of 2003, Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed Plame with Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper, according to two legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter. Federal investigators were also skeptical of claims by Rove that he had only first learned of Plame's employment with the CIA from a journalist, even though he also claimed he could not specifically recall the name of the journalist.

As the truthfulness of Rove's accounts became more of a focus of investigators, career Justice Department employees and senior FBI officials became even more concerned about the continuing role in the investigation of Ashcroft, because of his close relationship with Rove. Rove had earlier served as an adviser to Ashcroft during the course of three political campaigns. And Rove's onetime political consulting firm had been paid more than $746,000 for those services.

Tip to AMERICAblog.