Aide Got Early Word on CIA Leak Inquiry

President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., was notified about 12 hours before the rest of the White House staff that the Justice Department had begun an investigation into the leak of a CIA officer’s name, Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales said Sunday.

It was not known whether Card informed any other White House staff members before they were formally told of the investigation the next morning. The White House has repeatedly said it will have no comment on the specifics of the continuing investigation.

Gonzales also said he was among the current and former White House officials who had testified before a federal grand jury investigating whether any laws were broken when the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent and the wife of a prominent administration critic, was disclosed in July 2003.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” he offered no details of his testimony and said he had learned of Plame’s identity from newspaper reports.

Plame was working at CIA headquarters on issues involving weapons of mass destruction when the agency sent her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to investigate allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase nuclear materials in Africa -- a key element of the administration’s rationale for war. Wilson criticized those claims in a New York Times op-ed article on July 6, 2003, and has charged that his wife’s identity was made public in retaliation for his comments.

Plame had worked undercover for the agency, and in some circumstances it can be a federal crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert operative.

The CIA requested a Justice Department investigation after syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote, eight days after Wilson’s article appeared, that Plame had helped to arrange to send her husband to Africa. Novak identified her by name as a CIA operative.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel before being named attorney general this year, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the Justice Department call announcing the investigation came about 8 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2003.

He said he asked whether the staff should be notified immediately, given that most of them had gone home, or whether it could wait until morning.

“And we were advised, ‘Go ahead and notify the staff early in the morning. That would be OK.’ ” he said.

But he did tell one person in the White House that evening.

“I told the chief of staff,” he said. “And then immediately the next morning, I told the president. And shortly thereafter, there was a notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff.”

Appearing on the same program, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said that Gonzales’ decision to notify only Card immediately did not reflect “the soundest in judgments.”

“The real question now is, who did the chief of staff speak to?” Biden asked. “Did the chief of staff pick up the phone and call Karl Rove? Did the chief of staff pick up the phone and call anybody else? Ordinarily, you would think that he would immediately send out an e-mail to every member of the staff.”