This is how it all went down:
10 February 2002 Wilson's trip to Niger
On 10 June 2003, an analyst at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) sent a memo to Ambassador Grossman outlining Ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger and mentioning that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Reportedly, Grossman wanted the memo as background to use at a White House meeting on criticism of President Bush for using the Niger claim in his State of the Union speech.
The Washington Post says it is not clear if Grossman actually talked about the memo or mentioned Mrs. Wilson at the meeting.[1]
12 June 2003: During a telephone call, Cheney told Libby that Wilson's wife worked in Counter Proliferation [178].
On 6 July 2003, Richard Armitage asked the head of INR, Carl Ford, to send a copy of the memo [that The State Department wrote] to Colin Powell aboard Air Force One.
In Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on October 28, 2005, Grossman is the Under Secretary of State mentioned as giving information about Plame to Libby.
7 July 2003: Colin Powell receives a copy of a 10 June memo naming Valerie Wilson as Joe Wilson's wife and as a CIA officer, taking it with him on a trip on Air Force One with President Bush. The paragraph identifying Mrs. Wilson is marked "(S-NF)," signfying its information is classified "Secret, Noforn."[35] Noforn is a code word indicating that the information is not to be shared with foreign nationals.[36] Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Ari Fleischer, Walter H. Kansteiner, III, and Andrew Card are on the trip, among others.
Sometime before 8 July 2003 Robert Novak has a conversation with Richard Armitage
(Deputy Assistant Secretary of State). In that conversation he is told
for the first time that Wilson's wife works for the C.I.A. [Armitage
didn't tell Novak her name; subsequently, after his August 2006 public
disclosure that he was the "inadvertent" leak, Armitage has asserted
that he did not know her name at the time.] Novak uses an edition of
Joseph C. Wilson's biography in Who's Who to identify by her maiden name Valerie Plame.
According to the reporters Isikoff and Corn, Armitage's leak was
"inadvertent, and the Intelligence Identities Act hadn't been violated."[37]
8 July 2003:
Robert Novak has a phone conversation with Karl Rove in which C.I.A.
agent Plame is discussed, according to an unnamed source who had been
told not to talk about the case. Novak is reported to have told Rove
the name of the agent as "Valerie Plame" and her role in Wilson's
mission to Africa. Rove is reported to have told Novak something to the
effect of, "I heard that, too." or "Oh, so you already know about it."
Rove reportedly told the grand jury that at this time he had already
heard about Wilson's wife working for the CIA from another journalist, but is unable to remember who that was.[38]
circa 10 July 2003–11 July 2003: Novak called Bill Harlowe, then CIA spokesman, to confirm information regarding Plame and Wilson. According to Novak, Harlow denied that Plame "suggested" that Wilson be
selected for the trip, and Harlow stated instead that CIA
"counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to
contact him."[40]
According to Harlow, he "warned Novak in the strongest terms he was
permitted to use without revealing classified information," that
Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if Novak did
write about it, her name should not be revealed. Harlow said that after
Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an
undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the
story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should
not be used. According to Harlow, however, he did not tell Novak
directly that Plame was undercover because that information was
classified.[41]
According to Novak, not only did Harlowe not tell Novak that Plame was
undercover, he actually told Novak that "she probably never again would
be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause
'difficulties.'" Novak states that if he had been told that disclosure
of Plame's name would endanger her or anyone else, he would not have
disclosed the name.[42]
July 14 - Washington Post columnist Robert Novak publishes the name of Valerie Plame, blowing her cover as a CIA operative. The CIA leak scandal begins.
on July 22, 2003,
Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce report: "Novak, in an interview, said
his sources had come to him with the information. 'I didn't dig it out,
it was given to me,' he said. 'They thought it was significant, they
gave me the name and I used it."[22] In response, although Phelps stands by the report, Novak has argued that he was "badly misquoted."[52] In September 2003, on CNN's Crossfire,
Novak asserted: "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak
this. There is no great crime here," adding that while he learned from
two administration officials that Plame was a CIA employee, "They asked
me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or
anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs.
Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in
charge of undercover operators."[53]
In his column of October 1, 2003,
'The CIA Leak," Novak states that he included the paragraph about
Wilson's wife "because it looked like the missing explanation of an
otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission." He writes:
“
I was curious why a high-ranking official in President
Bill Clinton's
National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had
become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after
contributing to
Al Gore in the last election cycle and
John Kerry in this one
...
During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I
asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had
been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion
of one of its employees, his wife.
[44][43]
”
In that column Novak also claims to have learned Mrs. Wilson's maiden name "Valerie Plame" from his entry in Who's Who In America,[45] though it was her CIA status rather than her maiden name which was a secret.
