Woodward Testifies He Was Told of Plame Before Others

Journalist Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was publicly disclosed.

In a deposition that lasted more than two hours, Woodward told Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction and that he did not believe the information was classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released Tuesday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward, a Washington Post assistant managing editor, about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- a week after Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official’s name or provide crucial details about the testimony.

Woodward’s testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby about three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official -- not Libby -- the first government employee to disclose Plame’s CIA employment to a journalist. It would also make Woodward, who has been critical of the inquiry, the first journalist known to have learned about Plame from a government source.

The testimony does not appear to shed new light on whether Libby is guilty of lying and obstructing justice in the nearly two-year investigation or provide new insight into the role of Karl Rove, a senior advisor to President Bush who remains under investigation.

Rove spokesman Mark Corallo said Rove was not the unnamed official who told Woodward about Plame and that he did not discuss Plame with Woodward.

William Jeffress Jr., one of Libby’s lawyers, said Tuesday that Woodward’s testimony undermined Fitzgerald’s public claims about his client and raised questions about what else the prosecutor might not know. Libby has said he learned Plame’s identity from NBC news talk-show host Tim Russert.

Fitzgerald has been investigating whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked classified information -- Plame’s identity as a CIA operative -- to reporters to discredit allegations made by her husband, former U.S. envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV. Plame’s name was revealed in a July 14, 2003, newspaper column by Robert Novak, eight days after Wilson accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Woodward is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist best known for helping to expose the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. “It was the first time in 35 years as a reporter that I have been asked to provide information to a grand jury,” Woodward said in the statement.

Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said the paper waited until late Tuesday to disclose Woodward’s deposition in the hope of persuading his source to allow him to speak publicly.