Armitage Didn't Know Plame Was Covert

Bottom Line Up Front: Richard Armitage accidentally outed Valerie Plame because of her own carelessness in allowing her name to be known at the CIA.

Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State who outed Valerie Plame, insisted he did not know she was covert and that it was accidental.

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer on Late Edition, Armitage explained that the outing occurred, although Plame's covert status is highly questionable, because he'd never seen a covert agent's name listed in a memo as hers was.  He was sent an interoffice memo which stated Plame was an CIA analyst and her name was mentioned to publicly chair a meeting.

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(transcript)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALERIE PLAME WILSON, AUTHOR, "FAIR GAME": Mr. Armitage did a very foolish thing. He has been around Washington for decades. He should know better. He's a senior government official. Whether he knew where exactly I worked in the CIA, he had no rights to go talking to a reporter about where I worked. That was strictly off-limits.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Those are strong words from Valerie Plame Wilson.

ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson," not "Mrs. Plame," worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.

BLITZER: Normally in memos they don't name covert operatives?

ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.

BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?

ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.

BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.

ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covert agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.

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