The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium.

Between 2003 and 2007, Patrick Fitzgerald led a criminal investigation into allegations that the Bush administration had leaked Plame's identity as retribution against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, who had publicly questioned the rationale for the Iraq War. In August 2006, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed that he had been Novak's primary source for the leak.

By July 2007, when President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence Scooter Libby had received for perjury and obstruction of justice during Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak, the scandal had largely come to a close. In April 2018, President Donald Trump fully pardoned Libby.^[1]

1980s

• Between 1980 and 1982 Sadam Hussein's Baathist Iraq procures more than 400 tons of yellowcake from Portugal and Niger. This material remains in Iraq under IAEA monitoring until the 2003 invasion.^[2][3]

1981

• Seyni Kountché, then President of Niger, stated that his country would "sell uranium even to the devil."^[4]

1988

• A BBC report notes that South Africa illicitly sells Uranium to Iraq through Uday Hussein. This sale is unverified by other sources.^[5]

1990s

1990

• Valerie Plame begins her first CIA posting, posing as a State Department official at the US embassy in Athens.^[6]

1991

• The Persian Gulf War ends with Iraq being forced to concede to the demands of the United Nations after a coalition led by the United States forces directed by GHW Bush's Pentagon where Colin Powell heads army via Gen Norman Schwartzkopf expels Iraqi Baathist armies of Saddam Hussein from burning oil fields of Kuwait.

1993

• According to an editorial in National Review Online, an IAEA report lists 580 tons of natural uranium in Iraqi stockpiles, some of which came from Niger.^[4]

1994

• May 22, 1994: Brewster Jennings & Associates, a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency posing as a "legal services office," is registered with Dun and Bradstreet.^[7] Brewster Jennings & Associates will be a cover for many CIA officers, including Valerie Plame.

1997

• Fearing that Aldrich Ames has revealed her identity to Russian intelligence, the CIA recalls Plame from Europe to Washington.^[6][8]

1999

• June: (According to a 2002 conversation between Joseph C. Wilson and former Prime Minister of Niger Ibrahim Assane Mayaki) An Iraqi businessman approached Mayaki and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and Niger. Mayaki interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales, but steered the conversation away from trade because of UN sanctions against Iraq.^[9] In a 2004 conversation with Wilson, Wilson's "Nigerien source" (presumably, Mayaki), told Wilson that the "Iraqi businessman" he had met in June 1999 was Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Information Minister, sometimes referred to in the U.S. press as "Baghdad Bob."^[10]

2001

• Summer-Autumn 2001: Marc Grossman, the recently appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, allegedly warns Turkish members of a nuclear smuggling ring connected to the proliferation network of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan about Brewster Jennings & Associates' role as a Central Intelligence Agency front.^[11][12][13]
• New Years 2001: Over the holiday, a gang of burglars break into the embassy of Niger in Rome and steal some letterhead and official stamps.^[14]

2002

February 2002

• 12 February: Vice President Cheney reads a DIA report on alleged Niger-Iraq uranium sale and asks for the CIA's analysis.^[15]
• 12 February: Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. employee working in its Counterproliferation Division, sends a memo to the deputy chief of the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations stating that her husband has good contact with the former Prime Minister and Director of Mines in Niger as well as other contacts who might prove useful in shedding light on the supposed Niger-Iraq uranium contract.^{[citation needed]}
• 13 February: An operations official cables an overseas officer seeking approval of Joe Wilson investigation^{[citation needed]}
• 19 February: CIA staffers, including Plame, meet to discuss sending Wilson to Niger. According to Plame, she is there only for a few minutes.^[16]
• 26 February 2002: Joseph C. Wilson travels to Niger at the request of the CIA. Joe Wilson meets with the former minister of mines, Mai Manga, who said he knew of no sales of uranium between Niger and rogue states. He states the mines are closely monitored from mining to transport loading making it at least very difficult if not impossible for a rogue state to obtain uranium through this channel.^{[citation needed]}
  • Joe Wilson indicates that in his conversation with former Niger Prime Minister, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, the PM indicated that he was not aware of any sales contract with Iraq but that in June 1999 he was approached by a businessman, asking that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations. (Note: Niger's two largest exports are uranium and livestock).^[17] Wilson indicated he thought the meeting took place but that Mayaki, who was aware of the illegality of such activities, let the matter drop due to the sanctions on Iraq.^[18]
  • According to the report of the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee, (July 2004, pages 43–46), former Prime Minister of Niger Mayaki told Wilson in Niger that Mayaki interpreted the June 1999 proposal of a businessman for "expanding commercial relations" as an offer to buy uranium yellowcake. However, this was only an interpretation. The Iraqi did not mention the word "uranium" or "yellowcake."
  • The Senate report's exact words on Mayaki's suspicions of Iraq's interest in uranium: "Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations' between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted 'expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the U.N. sanctions on Iraq."
  • The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence faulted the C.I.A. for not fully investigating Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger, citing reports from both a foreign service and the United States Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin, a country located between Niger and Togo.

March 2002

• 5 March: Wilson is debriefed by two C.I.A. officials at his home.^[19]

September 2002

• 9 September 2002: According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency (SISMI), Nicolò Pollari, meets secretly with Stephen Hadley, then Bush's Deputy National Security Adviser; the purpose of the meeting, as reported by La Repubblica, was to bypass a skeptical CIA and get documents purporting to detail an Iraqi attempt to purchase Niger uranium directly to the White House.^[20] Hadley and others who attended this meeting say they have little memory of the details of what was discussed, and in a press conference Hadley characterized the meeting as a "courtesy call" that lasted less than 15 minutes.^[21] According to the Italian Prime Minister's office, the meeting was between the then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and Nicolò Pollari, in the presence of an Italian and US delegation that included Stephen Hadley.^[22]

October 2002

• 6 October 2002: The National Security Council sent a sixth draft of a speech President Bush was to give in Cincinnati to the CIA. The draft contained the statement about Iraq "having been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide.^[23] George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and other of his CIA officials, directed the text be removed from the speech as the certainty regarding the accuracy of the claim was weak.^[24]
• 7 October 2002: George W. Bush gives a speech in Cincinnati in which he, for the first time, lays out in detail the case for disarming Iraq. In that speech he asserts, "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."^[25] As directed the previous day by George Tenet, particularly through contact with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, the speech does not reference Iraq's alleged pursuit of Nigerien uranium.^[24]
• 9 October 2002: Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist for Panorama magazine, part of the media empire of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, contacts the U.S. Embassy in Rome, requesting authentication of some documents of interest that she has been offered. These documents allegedly represent a contract by Iraq to purchase uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. The owner has reportedly told Elisabetta Burba that she can review the documents but can only use them if she pays 15,000 euros. Panorama refuses to pay that amount unless they are first verified as authentic.^[23]
• 15 October 2002: The embassy in Rome faxes copies of these BP-documents to the State Department's Bureau of Nonproliferation in Washington, which in turn provided copies to the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). It will be a few weeks, early January 2003, before INR analysts conclude the Burba Panorama documents are fabricated fakes.
• 16 October 2002: During an inter-agency meeting, analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Security Agency, and the CIA all obtain copies of the BP-documents. None of the four CIA analysts in attendance remembers taking a copy, which later would show up in a CIA vault during a postmortem search.^[23]

December 2002

• 19 December 2002: By this date the uranium claim, which George Tenet had removed from Bush's speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October 2002, had found its way back into a State Department "fact sheet." Following that, the Pentagon requests an authoritative judgement from the National Intelligence Council as to whether or not Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.^[26]

2003

January 2003

• January: The National Intelligence Council, responding to the Pentagon's request, drafts a memo addressing the Niger uranium story in which they conclude the story is baseless. The memo arrives at the White House prior to the State of the Union address given later that month.^[26]
• 6 January: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asks the United States for any information related to the claim that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger.^[23]
• 13 January: The INR's nuclear analyst sends email to colleagues providing rationale on why the Yellowcake document is a hoax. The CIA's nuclear analyst does not have the BP-documents in question and requests a copy.^[23]
• 16 January: CIA received copies of the original foreign language BP-documents on the Niger-Iraq contract.^[23]
• 27 January: During a National Security Council meeting at the White House, someone hands CIA head George Tenet a hardcopy of President Bush's State of the Union address. Tenet is, he later testifies, too busy to read it and hands it to an aide who passes it to a top official in the CIA intelligence directorate who was also too busy to read it.^[23]
• 28 January: President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union speech. Toward the end Bush states, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."^[27] The sentence becomes known as the "16 words." In his State of the Union speech, Bush also declares, "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."

February 2003

• 4 February: The United States provides electronic copy of the BP-documents on Iraqi acquisition of Niger yellowcake to Jacques Bute, then head of IAEA's Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, who was in New York, and sends a copy to the IAEA offices in Vienna as well.^[23]

March 2003edit

• 3 March: The IAEA tells the U.S. Mission in Vienna the BP-documents on Niger yellowcake were obvious fakes.^[23] Among errors reportedly identified in the documents is a reference to a Nigerien constitution in 1965.^{[citation needed]}
• 20 March: Iraq invasion begins.

May 2003edit

• 6 May: After an off-the-record meeting with Wilson, Nicholas Kristof reports in a New York Times column that "a former U.S. ambassador to Africa" had been sent to Niger the year before and had reported that the Iraq uranium allegations were false.^[19][28]

June 2003edit

• 10 June: State Department staff prepare an internal memo naming Plame as Wilson's wife. The paragraph identifying Mrs. Wilson is marked "(S-NF)", signifying its information is classified "Secret, Noforn."^[16][29]
• 12 June: During a telephone call, Cheney told Libby that Wilson's wife worked in Counter Proliferation ^{[citation needed]}
• 12 June: Marc Grossman, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, meets with Scooter Libby and tells him that Plame works for the CIA and may have helped organize her husband's Niger trip.^[30]

July 2003edit

The "Plame affair" becomes such during this month. The month opens with Wilson's op-ed describing his trip to Niger and suggesting the Iraqi nuclear threat had been exaggerated, followed within days by multiple Bush administration leaks or confirmations to reporters and the publishing of Wilson's wife's name, revealing that Valerie Plame worked for the C.I.A. despite the fact that she was then undercover. By mid-month the first stories emerge suggesting the Bush administration had leaked this information as retribution against Wilson.

• 6 July: Wilson publishes an op-ed in The New York Times describing his trip to Niger and saying: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."^[31]
• 7 July: Secretary of State Colin Powell boards Air Force One for a trip to Africa with President Bush and other members of the administration. Powell carries with him a copy of the 10 June memo his State Department prepared, naming Plame as Wilson's wife and signifying the information is classified "Secret, Noforn."^[16][29]
• 7 July: Over lunch, Libby tells White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer that Wilson's wife works on nonproliferation issues at the CIA and was behind Wilson's trip to Niger.^[30]
• pre-8 July: Journalist Robert Novak has a conversation with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In that conversation he is told for the first time that Wilson's wife works for the C.I.A., though Armitage didn't tell Novak her name. (In August 2006, Armitage publicly discloses that he believes he was the "inadvertent" leak of the Plame secret, while also asserting that he did not know her actual name at the time.) Novak checks Joseph C. Wilson's biography in Who's Who to identify his wife, finding her maiden name Valerie Plame. According to the reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Armitage's leak was "inadvertent, and the Intelligence Identities Act hadn't been violated."^[32]
• 8 July: Robert Novak has a phone conversation with Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, in which C.I.A. agent Plame is discussed, according to an unnamed source who had been told not to talk about the case. Novak is reported to have told Rove the name of the agent as "Valerie Plame" and her role in Wilson's mission to Africa. Rove is reported to have told Novak something to the effect of, "I heard that, too." or "Oh, so you already know about it." Rove reportedly told the grand jury that at this time he had already heard about Wilson's wife working for the CIA from another journalist, but is unable to remember who that was.^[33]
• 8 July: Lewis Libby meets with journalist Judith Miller and tells her that the Niger uranium claim had been a "key judgement" of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and that Plame worked at the CIA. Libby would later state that President Bush had instructed him to disclose information from the classified NIE.^[34] The information Libby gave Miller was false; the Niger claim was not one of the "key judgements" headlined, bolded, and bulleted in the first pages of that NIE.^[26] Later, after testifying to a Federal grand jury in October 2005, Miller writes in a retrospective account published in the New York Times that on this date (and four days later, on 12 July 2003), Libby "played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance."^[35]
• c. 10 July – 11 July: Novak called CIA spokesman Bill Harlow to confirm information regarding Plame and Wilson. According to Novak, Harlow denied that Plame "suggested" that Wilson be selected for the trip, and Harlow stated instead that CIA "counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."^[36] According to Harlow, he "warned Novak in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information", that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if Novak did write about it, her name should not be revealed. Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. According to Harlow, however, he did not tell Novak directly that Plame was undercover because that information was classified.^[37] According to Novak, not only did Harlow fail to say that Plame was undercover, he actually told Novak that "she probably never again would be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties.'" Novak states that if he had been told that disclosure of Plame's name would endanger her or anyone else, he would not have disclosed the name.^[38]
• 11 July: Creators Syndicate distributes Novak's column naming Plame on the AP newswire.^[39]
• 11 July: Time reporter Matthew Cooper's internal Time e-mail message bearing the time 11:07 a.m. is sent to his bureau chief, stating: "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation. ... " Cooper writes that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." According to Cooper, Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCI" (CIA Director George Tenet) or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip." Rove also told Cooper that, "there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium from Niger".^[40] Cooper would later tell the investigating grand jury that Rove concluded the conversation by saying "I've already said too much."^[41]
• 11 July (afternoon or evening): CIA Director George Tenet takes responsibility for the misleading language concerning uranium in Bush's State of the Union Address, citing a failure of the agency's vetting process.^[42] Director Tenet also (1) clarified that Wilson had reported that a businessman had made possible overtures to acquire uranium from Niger; (2) alleged that Wilson's report did not mention forged documents or even mention the existence of documents; and (3) discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate conclusions regarding Iraq's nuclear program. According to a 2005 article in The New York Times, Tenet's 11 July 2003 statement was written by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.^[43]
• 12 July: President Bush and his team are still on their Africa visit. White House Press Secretary Fleischer discusses the uranium controversy, at a "press gaggle" at the National Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria, where President Bush was visiting, at 9:20 AM local time. After a brief statement on the President's activities at the hospital, Fleischer answers a question regarding the previous day's statement by CIA Director Tenet. Fleisher states that the President is pleased by the statement, and expresses the President's confidence in Tenet. The next question is one of accountability, which the press secretary deflects, saying, in part, "The greater truth is that nobody, but nobody, denies that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons." Fleischer cites Wilson's report as being supportive of the yellowcake claim. The conversation with reporters repeated that intelligence supported the notion that Iraq had or was trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Fleischer reiterates the administration's position that the yellowcake claim should not have risen to the level of inclusion in a "presidential speech." When asked about public perception, Fleischer denies that there's a problem. "Yes, the President has moved on. And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as well."^[44]
Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Plame_affair_timeline
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