Inquiry Into Leak Looks to Reporters

The investigation into whether the Bush administration illegally exposed the identity of an undercover CIA operative has turned to some of the journalists covering the inquiry.

A special prosecutor has asked reporters for the Washington Post and Newsday to sit for questions in connection with the investigation of the case, the papers acknowledged Monday. Other journalists might also be targeted for questioning, sources said.

The informal requests suggest that the 5-month-old probe into the alleged “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plame may be entering a critical phase. They also raise the possibility of journalists being subpoenaed to testify about the case before a federal grand jury.

The special prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, is trying to determine how Plame’s CIA connection ended up in a Robert Novak syndicated column published July 14 and whether laws governing the intentional disclosure of agency operatives were broken in the process.

Plame’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has alleged that the exposure was political payback by the Bush White House for writing an op-ed article, published July 6 in the New York Times, challenging a claim made by the president in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking to purchase “significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Wilson had visited Niger, the African country cited in an intelligence report, to assess the claim for the CIA. Wilson concluded that it was baseless.

Eric Lieberman, associate counsel for the Post, said he received a call from Fitzgerald last week requesting an opportunity to speak with two Post reporters about the case. Lieberman said he had not yet responded to the request. He said that Fitzgerald had declined to discuss what information he was seeking.

Newsday also acknowledged being approached by Fitzgerald. “We were contacted. Our reporters have not spoken to the government,” editor Howard Schneider said in a prepared statement, declining further comment.

A lawyer for Novak, James Hamilton, declined comment when asked whether the columnist had received such a request.

Since Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft chose him in December to head up the investigation, Fitzgerald, who is the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, has questioned members of the White House staff and subpoenaed various documents, including transcripts of phone calls from Air Force One.

Whether the latest requests are an indication that he is close to making a case -- or is still struggling to make one -- is impossible to tell. Fitzgerald is also said to be looking into whether any people he has interviewed may have lied under oath.

Criminal prosecutions arising from a leak of classified information are notoriously hard to prove without the cooperation of journalists, who by tradition decline to reveal their sources of information.

Some people close to the case viewed the requests as a prelude to subpoenaing the journalists.

“I take it they do not have a smoking gun,” said one lawyer close to the case who requested anonymity. He noted that Justice Department policy requires that, before calling journalists to a grand jury, prosecutors must first make an attempt to talk with them on a voluntary basis.

A spokesman for Fitzgerald declined to comment about the investigation.

Both newspapers have reported critical facts about the events leading up to the identification of Plame, as well as the subsequent investigation.

Newsday was considered the first publication to report that the Novak column had blown Plame’s status as an undercover CIA officer. The Post reported that, two days before the Novak column appeared, one of its reporters had a conversation with an unnamed administration official who identified Wilson’s wife as an agency analyst, without mentioning her by name.

In his new book, Wilson recounts receiving a phone call around the same time from veteran Post national security correspondent Walter Pincus, “who alerted me that ‘they are coming after you.’ ”