Karl Rove, 2005 News

one of President Bush's closest advisers, was revealed to be the secret source used by TIME magazine reporter Matt Cooper for a story he wrote in 2003 about the disclosure of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. “[I]t was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip,” Cooper emailed to his bureau chief after speaking with Karl Rove. In a July 2003 op-ed piece in the New York Times, Wilson's husband, Joseph, a former ambassador, discredited President Bush's claim—and a justification for war in Iraq—that Saddam Hussein was pursuing a nuclear weapons program by seeking to obtain uranium from Niger. Days after Wilson's article was published, columnist Robert Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA agent who specializes in weapons of mass destruction. Rove reportedly also spoke to Novak about Plame Wilson.