Fitzgerald Says Plame Was a Covert Agent

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek

In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.

Fitzgerald cites Wilson’s covert status as part of his argument – advanced in two strongly worded memos filed in recent days – that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, should be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

Libby was convicted last March of four counts of obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury relating to what he knew, and with whom he shared information, about Valerie Plame Wilson in the weeks prior to her outing by columnist Robert Novak in a July 14, 2003 newspaper column. Libby, who is appealing the verdict, is due to be sentenced next Tuesday by U.S. Judge Reggie Walton – an event that could well reignite a fierce political controversy over whether President Bush should pardon the former Cheney aide.

Libby’s lawyers, and many conservative partisans of his cause, have argued that Libby should be spared prison in part because there was no underlying crime in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s identity. (As his trial established, Wilson’s identity was leaked to a number of reporters by several Bush administration officials who were interested in discrediting the attacks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, on the White House’s handling of Iraq pre-war intelligence.)

(Original Article)