THE leak of information about an undercover CIA official that triggered a special prosecutor’s investigation was an inadvertent piece of gossip from Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State, it emerged this week, undermining claims that the agent was maliciously “outed” by the White House.

The revelation that Mr Armitage, a critic of the Administration’s neoconservatives, was the official who first exposed Valerie Plame makes it harder for opponents of President Bush to claim that her unmasking was part of a White House conspiracy against her husband, a high-profile critic of the Iraq war.

Former colleagues of Mr Armitage, briefing anonymously, confirmed claims made in a forthcoming book that he had been the source of the 2003 leak, but had passed on the information to the conservative columnist Robert Novak “in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip”, according to one report.

Ms Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat. He wrote in July 2003 that the Administration had exaggerated claims about Iraq’s weapons to justify the invasion. He based his allegations on a trip that he had made to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had sought uranium there.

Soon afterwards Mr Novak revealed that Mr Wilson was married to Ms Plame, a CIA operative. He suggested correctly that it was she who had recommended her husband for the Niger trip.

Colleagues of Mr Armitage, who had grave misgivings about the war, say that he had no idea that Ms Plame’s CIA status was classified when he mentioned her to Mr Novak.

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