Nightline Tuesday 9/30/03 - WH leak of CIA operative

[IkeWarnedUs]

This is from the ABC e-mail about tonight's Nightline topic:

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Columnist Robert Novak wrote a column a couple of months ago identifying Ambassador Wilson's wife as a CIA officer. Amb. Wilson was sent to investigate the reports that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. That report, since discredited, made its way into the President's State of the Union address, and has been a central issue in the controversy over the prewar intelligence on Iraq and how the White House used it. Wilson says that his wife's position was leaked in an effort to discredit him, and he blames the White House.

Now Novak said yesterday on TV that administration officials didn't call him, although I have to admit that I don't really see the significance of that. The issue is not who called whom. The issue is whether an administration official did identify an intelligence officer. That is, after all, illegal. The first President Bush said, and the tape of this is being used repeatedly, that people that do that are the worst kind of traitors.

<snip>

This is a fairly quick moving story, and John Donvan will wrap up the day's developments tonight. We're still working out who Ted's guests will be.

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Sounds like a good one