Who Exposed Whistleblower's Wife?

The FBI may launch an inquiry into whether the White House revealed the identity of a covert CIA official to punish her husband for blowing the whistle on President Bush for making misleading claims about the Iraqi nuclear programme, officials in Washington said yesterday.

Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador and the last American official to meet Saddam Hussein, triggered a scandal on July 6 when he published an article saying that the White House knew in advance that the president's public statements about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa were not credible.

Mr Wilson had been sent to Niger in 2002 by the CIA to investigate claims of attempted uranium purchases there, and reported back that they were "highly doubtful". Despite his report, President Bush said in his State of the Union address in January: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Mr Wilson said: "We spend billions of dollars on intelligence. But we end up putting something in the State of the Union address, something we got from another intelligence agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground presence."

After Mr Wilson blew the whistle, the White House admitted the mistake but alleged that his report had never reached senior administration officials - a claim Mr Wilson said was false.

A week after Mr Wilson went public, a conservative journalist, Bob Novak, published an article in which he wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate."

The report was controversial because it is against the law to reveal the identities of covert officials. If Ms Plame was investigating WMD deals, her cover would have been blown and her career ruined. Mr Wilson will not confirm or deny whether his wife is a CIA operative, but said yesterday: "Assuming it was true, the real victim in all this is American national security. Novak asserted that not only is my wife in the CIA but active in the WMD section. So senior administration officials have decided to take that particular asset out of the search for WMD in order to punish me."

The administration has denied giving Novak any names, but Mr Wilson said he had been contacted by other reporters who had both been told about his wife by White House officials.

The FBI said it would not comment on an ongoing investigation.