September 30, 2003	Tuesday	Sha’aban 3, 1424

WASHINGTON, Sept 29: The US Justice Department has launched a probe into whether members of President George Bush’s administration broke the law by disclosing the identity of a CIA agent whose husband challenged US evidence against Iraq.

“In matters like this, as a matter of routine, a question like this is referred to the Justice Department for appropriate action, and that’s what’s going to be done,” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Fox television.

The controversy centres on the public disclosure that the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, was an undercover CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction.

The agent’s name was printed in the US media after her husband publicly criticized Mr Bush’s assertion that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear materials in Niger.

The former envoy revealed in a newspaper article in July that the CIA had sent him to Africa to investigate the alleged purchases, and that he had found nothing to back them up.

The White House denied speculations that the president’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, was behind the leak.

The White House also rebuffed Democrats’ calls for a special counsel to be appointed to lead an investigation of the matter.

The probe comes at the request of Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet, The Washington Post reported.

In the July opinion piece printed in The New York Times, Mr Wilson questioned why the charge regarding the alleged purchases appeared in a major speech President Bush gave to Congress in January as part of the justification for invading Iraq.

But after the publication of the piece, the White House did concede that Mr Bush should not have included it the Niger charge in the speech.

CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for not getting the White House to drop the charge, a controversy that consumed part of the summer.

The International Atomic Energy Agency had dismissed the charges as based on forged documents.

In that July 6 article, Mr Wilson refuted Bush administration claims that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger, writing that US intelligence was “twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat”.

He would neither confirm nor deny whether his wife works for the CIA, but said officials in the administration might have violated the law if she is, in fact, a covert US intelligence operative and was exposed as such by US officials.

“It would be damaging not just to her career ... it would be her entire network that she may have established, any operations, any programmes or projects she was working on” which would be compromised, he said.

After the opinion piece appeared, two top White House officials called “at least six Washington journalists” and revealed the name and occupation of Mr Wilson’s wife, the Post said, citing a senior administration official.

Columnist Robert Novak printed her name in a July 14 column in which he said she had recommended Mr Wilson for the job, and that the decision to send Mr Wilson was made at a low level without Tenet’s knowledge.

Tenet himself requested the investigation into the leak, which violates federal law protecting the identities of covert CIA agents.

“It certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate,” Condoleezza Rice said.

“It was well known that the president of the United States does not expect the White House to get involved in such things.”

Some Democrats in the US Congress also have said it appeared to be an attempt to punish Mr Wilson for his remarks, and that the action was in keeping with a White House said to be ruthless with anyone who dares to cross it.—Reuters