In a sort of a high stakes exercise in musical chairs, everybody who is anybody in Washington is issuing a public denial that they served as Bob Woodward's source for the leak that Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, worked at the CIA and was classified as a spy.So to save everybody a lot of angst worrying about where they might be when the music stops playing, let me simply admit, on the record, that I was the source of this information.
And it was a total accident.
I ran into Bob in a terminal at the Boise Idaho Airport some time ago. Here's a relatively recent picture I have of him. Although quite frankly, he didn't have the beard and appeared somewhat older at the airport than the picture shows. I wondered if perhaps the irregularity that comes with frequent travel might be responsible for the latter.
Bob pretended not to recognize me, which is not surprising given the sensitive nature of his work, but we chatted it up anyway. He was real fidgety, and actually didn't really say too much. He had a nervous smile, kept looking at his watch, and at me, and elsewhere, seeming kind of anxious, while we talked.
He did say he was on his way home, and offered me his autograph, but I declined because I didn't have one of his books on me.
His behavior reminded me of some of the people I'd interact with back when I worked for the government, so after we chatted about my business ventures and so on, I got to talking with him about some of the better looking women I knew who worked at the CIA. I was just listing them off, starting with the natural blondes, and Valerie's name just kind of tumbled out.
What was really neat was that when the flight to Los Angeles was called, Bob got up and boarded, even though he said he was going to his home, which I'm sure is in Washington because I've been on his front portch, talking to him through the door, on several ocassions.
What a professional!! He can really be trusted to keep a secret, even though he got this one by total mistake.
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