MercuryNews.com | 07/21/2005 | Memo with agent's name was marked secret

MercuryNews.com | 07/21/2005 | Memo with agent's name was marked secret:

"A classified State Department memo central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked ``(S)'' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.
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The memo was delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell on July 7, 2003, as he headed to Africa for a trip with President Bush aboard Air Force One. Plame was unmasked in a syndicated column by Robert Novak seven days later.
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Karl Rove, President Bush's deputy chief of staff, has testified that he learned Plame's name from Novak a few days before telling another reporter she worked at the CIA and played a role in her husband's mission, according to a lawyer familiar with Rove's account. Rove has also testified that the first time he saw the State Department memo was when ``people in the special prosecutor's office'' showed it to him, said Robert Luskin, his attorney."