From Bob Novak’s column today (find it here):

The trial provided no information whatever about Valerie Plame’s status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband’s mission. No hard evidence was produced that Libby ever was told she was undercover. Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and Federal District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled. Yet, in his closing arguments, Fitzgerald referred to Mrs. Wilson’s secret status, and in answer to a reporter’s question after the verdict, he said she was “classified.”

In fact, her being classified — that is, that her work was a government secret — did not in itself meet the standard required for prosecution of the leaker (former Deputy Secretary of State Armitage) under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. That statute limits prosecution to exposers of covert intelligence activities overseas, whose revelation would undermine U.S. intelligence. That is why Fitzgerald did not move against Armitage.

Some questions asked me in television and radio interviews after the verdict implied that I revealed Armitage’s name to Fitzgerald. Actually, in my first interview with Fitzgerald after he had been named special prosecutor, he indicated he knew Armitage was my leaker. I assumed that was the product of detective work by the FBI. In fact, Armitage had turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality.

On Fox’s “Hannity & Colmes” Tuesday night, super-lawyer David Boies said Fitzgerald never should have prosecuted Libby because there was no underlying criminal violation. Boies scoffed at Fitzgerald’s contention that Libby had obstructed him from exposing criminal activity. Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election dispute, is hardly a Bush sympathizer. But neither is he a Democratic partisan trying to milk this obscure scandal.

Read Bill Gertz’s 2004 piece about Plame’s identity leaked BY THE CIA years before here:

Mrs. Plame’s identity first was revealed publicly by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak in a July 14, 2003, column about Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore for a nuclear-arms program.
The Justice Department then began an investigation of the disclosure under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the name of a covert agent.
However, officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame’s cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.
“The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone’s cover,” one official said. “In this case, the CIA failed to do that.”
A second official, however, said the compromises before the news column were not publicized and thus should not affect the investigation of the Plame matter.

Jonah Goldberg on the “wounded” Wilsons who are shopping a movie:

The Wilsons’ civil lawsuit against Dick Cheney, Rove et al — filed, they assure us, “with heavy hearts” — claims that the White House’s revelation of her identity put her life and the lives of her children in danger. (Never mind that it wasn’t the White House who outed her but Richard Armitage over at the State Department.) Even after baring all for Vanity Fair, the golden couple clearly take every effort to maintain their privacy. While heading for a vacation getaway, Wilson couldn’t resist giving one last interview at the Houston airport. One of his sons blurted out for everyone to hear, “My daddy is famous, my mommy is a secret spy.” Clearly the pressures of the Wilson family code of silence had gotten to the lad.

Just last month, the golden couple was spied lunching with Morgan Fairchild at the Four Seasons in Washington. The trio supped on soup and salad and shared a lovely mushroom risotto, which probably won’t be on the menu wherever they send Libby. You’d think the golden couple would rate higher than the faded star of “Falcon Crest.” But there’s a buzz that she might play Valerie in the movie Warner Bros. has just green-lighted about Valerie’s life. Other boldface names under consideration include Sharon Stone and Gwyneth Paltrow, so it was really a kindness for the Wilsons to even take the meeting.