Top White House Advisers Named As Cia Leak Sources

Key political advisers to President George Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney were named yesterday as sources in the leaking of the name of a CIA operative.

A Time magazine reporter who testified before a grand jury last week said that Mr Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, was the first person to tell him that a critic of the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq was married to a CIA operative.

He also wrote that the information was backed up in a subsequent telephone conversation with Mr Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

According to Time reporter Matt Cooper, Mr Libby replied "Yeah, I've heard that too," when asked if he knew that the critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was married to the agent, Valerie Plame.

Cooper's conversation with Mr Rove on the subject, he writes, concluded with the presidential adviser telling the reporter: "I've already said too much."

The White House has explicitly denied in the past the involvement of either Mr Rove or Mr Libby in the naming of the CIA operative.

Former ambassador Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Although he found no proof of such activity the claims were used in Mr Bush's 2003 state of the union address as evidence of Iraq's WMD programme. Mr Wilson wrote a newspaper article questioning the inclusion of the material in the speech. Shortly afterwards, his wife's identity as a covert CIA operative was revealed in the press.

The arcane dispute has caused a storm in Washington because to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover agent is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Mr Bush has pledged to fire anyone found responsible for the leak. But Mr Rove is the president's top political strategist, a long-time ally credited as the architect of his two election victories. Republicans have denounced the furore as a Democrat witch-hunt.

In an article in Time magazine Cooper recounts his evidence last week to the grand jury. He says that while Mr Rove did not disclose the identity of former ambassador Wilson's wife, he did say that she worked at the "agency", a reference to the CIA, and was involved in WMD. He also says that Mr Rove told him that Mr Wilson had not been sent to Niger by the director of the CIA.

"This was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife," Cooper writes. "So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the "agency" on "WMD"? Yes ... Is any of this a crime? Beats me."