Ex-CIA officer sues Cheney over leak

In this file photo, former CIA agent Valerie Plame (R) and her husband Joseph Wilson chat with guests before taking their seats at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 29, 2006, at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC. PHOTO: AFP

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in US District Court, Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, said Cheney, Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, leaked her CIA status to reporters to punish Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration's motives in Iraq.

Plame's identity as a CIA officer was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. At the time, Plame's job as an operations officer was classified information. Novak's column appeared eight days after Wilson alleged in an opinion piece in The New York Times that the Bush administration had twisted prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war.

The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in early 2002 to determine whether there was any truth to reports that Iraq had made a deal to acquire yellowcake uranium from the government of Niger to make a nuclear weapon.