US: Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward has revealed that a senior official in the Bush administration told him the identity of a CIA undercover officer a month before it was exposed publicly.
The Pulitzer prizewinner, who is best known for his role in exposing the Watergate scandal, was questioned under oath on Monday by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the leaking of Valerie Wilson's identity.
Vice-president Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has been charged with perjury and obstructing justice by lying to investigators about his part in leaking the name to journalists.
Mrs Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is a White House critic who helped to debunk bogus claims that Saddam Hussein tried to import nuclear materials from Niger.
Neither Mr Woodward nor his newspaper identified the "senior administration official" who told him in June 2003 that Mrs Wilson was a spy. Mr Woodward said he does not believe he discussed Mrs Wilson with Mr Libby and a spokesman for President Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove said that Mr Rove did not speak to Mr Woodward about the CIA officer.
Mr Woodward did not tell his senior editors until last month that an administration official had told him about Mrs Wilson before Mr Libby is alleged to have leaked her identity to journalists.
Mr Woodward claims he told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus that Mrs Wilson was a CIA analyst dealing with weapons of mass destruction.
But Mr Pincus told the newspaper that he has no recollection of any such conversation, and that he cannot imagine that he would have forgotten it. Mr Woodward, who has written two books about the Bush administration and is working on a third, has criticised the CIA leak investigation, describing Mr Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog prosecutor".
The day before Mr Libby was indicted, Mr Woodward told CNN's Larry King that he saw no evidence of criminal intent behind the leak.
"This began not as somebody launching a smear campaign . . . when the story comes out I'm quite confident we're going to find out that it started kind of as gossip, as chatter."
In other interviews, Mr Woodward has played down the damage done by leaking Mrs Wilson's identity, claiming that no CIA operatives were exposed because of it.
"When I think all of the facts come out in this case, it's going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great," he told National Public Radio.