Despite contrary evidence, CNN's Townsend insisted "facts" show neither Rove nor Libby outed Plame as CIA operative
On the May 28 edition of CNN Newsroom, national security contributor Fran Townsend twice made the false claim that neither former deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove nor former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had "outed Valerie Plame" as a CIA agent and that the leaker was former deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In fact, Rove was a source of the information about Plame's CIA employment for at least two journalists -- columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper -- while Libby was a source of the information for both Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller.
Townsend was discussing former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's claim in his new book that Rove misled him regarding Rove's involvement in the leak. During the discussion, anchor Brianna Keilar noted that contrary to what McClellan had told the press in October 2003, "Karl Rove did talk to the media about Valerie Plame" and that "Libby was convicted for lying about his role, or about what he said to authorities." In response, Townsend asserted that "we know from the outcome of the [Special Counsel Patrick] Fitzgerald investigation" into the leak that "it wasn't Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby who outed Valerie Plame. That was a senior official in the State Department." After Keilar stated that McClellan had "said they [Rove and Libby] were not involved, and the facts now show that indeed they were involved," Townsend asserted that "what the facts have showed is they weren't the ones who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. That's -- that was done by somebody else." She later said that "[t]hey weren't the ones who outed him [sic: Plame]." Keilar then said that it was "Dick Armitage, of course, the original source there for the outing of her name."
In fact, Novak has identified both Rove and Armitage as the sources for his July 14, 2003, column, and Cooper named Rove as his source who identified Plame as an employee of the CIA during a telephone conversation on July 11, 2003. In Cooper's first-person account of his testimony before the grand jury in the leak investigation, he identified Libby as his confirming source. Miller testified on January 30, 2007, that Libby disclosed Plame's CIA employment to her at a breakfast meeting at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 8, 2003, the same day as the meeting in which Armitage disclosed Plame's employment to Novak -- and six days before Novak's July 14 column was published.
