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Richard L. Armitage Called Likely Leak Source
WASHINGTON, March 14 — A former executive editor of The Washington Post was quoted in a magazine article published Tuesday as saying that Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, likely was the official who revealed the identity of the intelligence officer at the center of the C.I.A. leak case to Bob Woodward, an editor and reporter for The Post.

Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post editor who guided Mr. Woodward's Watergate reporting, is quoted in the article about the leak investigation in the April issue of Vanity Fair as saying, "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption." The assertion attributed to Mr. Bradlee added the weight of one of the country's best-known editors to months of speculation that Mr. Armitage could be Mr. Woodward's source. Mr. Armitage has not commented on the matter. On Tuesday, he did not return a reporter's phone call.

In an interview, Mr. Bradlee said that he had been told about Mr. Woodward's source although he did not recall saying the exact words attributed to him by the Vanity Fair reporter. Mr. Bradlee said his information about Mr. Armitage was imprecise, although he said Mr. Armitage's identification as Mr. Woodward's source was "an inference that could be drawn." A spokesman for Vanity Fair defended the accuracy of the quotes, saying that the author of the article, Marie Brenner, said that she had tape recorded Mr. Bradlee's comments.

Mr. Bradlee said Mr. Woodward had not told him the identity of the source. "Woodward is not my source for any knowledge I have about the case," Mr. Bradlee said. The question of who told Mr. Woodward about the intelligence officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, is one of the lingering mysteries of the C.I.A. leak inquiry.

In an article last November, Mr. Woodward said he would not name his source, but he has written that the person who told him about Ms. Wilson was a former or current government official and longtime source who told him about her in an offhand manner at the end of a lengthy interview.
That fits Armitage
In part, Mr. Woodward's disclosure was important because he said the interview with the source occurred in June 2003, which meant he may have been the first reporter to learn of Ms. Wilson's identity, weeks before she was named in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak. Mr. Woodward never wrote about the case, but in the article in November he said he was disclosing the conversation because his source had decided to talk to the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, about it.

Mr. Novak has also been silent about his source, although he has written that the person was a government official who was not a "partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak named Ms. Wilson in a column on July 14, 2003, after Ms. Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly criticized the Bush administration as twisting intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs in months preceding the war.

The disclosure of Ms. Wilson's name led to a grand jury investigation by Mr. Fitzgerald, who in October brought obstruction and perjury charges against I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. The indictment accused Mr. Libby of falsely testifying that he learned of Ms. Wilson's identity from reporters, when, the prosecutor charged, he had been given information about her from Mr. Cheney and others in the government.
Posted by: Steve 2006-03-15
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=145541