Tom Maguire thinks Risen was in the expanding universe of people who knew about Plame long before Novak's story and thinks one of the talking heads on the blather circuit where Risen is shilling his book should ask him. He makes out a plausible case that Risen did know:

...since Mr. Risen is an authority on the motivations of the Plame leakers, is he also sitting on a Bob Woodward style revelation of his own?  Did Mr. Risen actually get a leak from an Administration official linking Wilson's wife to the CIA and the Wilson trip to Niger?

One might almost wonder why he didn't — Bob Woodward received a leak, quite possibly from Richard Armitage at the State Department, when he wasn't even looking for it.

Judy Miller got a leak from Lewis Libby, and perhaps others, although her memory was foggy.

Andrea Mitchell said, to her own eventual discomfiture, that among journalists who cover the intelligence community and were probing the Niger story, Ms. Wilson's CIA connection was "widely known".  Surely Mr. Risen is a member of this club.

And over at the Times, Nick Kristof told his readers that "Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover".

And in this June 19 2003 story, Mr. Risen buried a mention of the Niger—Iraq—uranium controversy in the last paragraph.  Of course, the Times was on this with Nick Kristof's May and June columns, and a June 13 editorial, but one hopes that at least a few of the Times reporters on their Washington desk were exerting themselves to keep pace with Walter Pincus of the WaPo, who had a big breakout story on June 12.

Well, has anyone asked Mr. Risen, or the other NY Times reporters if they received as leak about Valerie Plame (or Wilson's wife — no Russertian subterfuges here)?

Of course, if he did, the follow up question is why he didn't rush to print that Wilson's wife was an agency employee who launched him on his Mission to Niger, isn't it??

Clarice Feldman   1 03 06