RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bushgate

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the G-man said:
More on Woodward's role, and who the leaker might have really been, from Newsweek:

One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source.

A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting."

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter ... I don't see an underlying crime here."

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the G-man said:
POWELL AIDE SEEN AS NOVAK'S LEAKER

Renewed speculation centered on Colin Powell's top aide Richard Armitage as the original leaker in the Valerie Plame case yesterday after columnist Robert Novak's latest revelations.

Novak was the first journalist to identify Plame as a CIA staffer and in a column yesterday he gave new information but declined to identify his first source, simply repeating it wasn't "a political gunslinger."

That fits Armitage who, like Powell, was skeptical about the Iraq war and knew that Plame played a role in setting up an Iraq-linked trip for her husband, Joe Wilson.

If Armitage was the source of the leak, it is unlikely his goal was discredit Iraq war critics as Wilson has claimed.

The Post has [also] reported Armitage is the likely source

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