As we wait for news on the Karl Rove indictment watch, MSNBC is providing some clues as to the damage that Rove and Scooter Libby caused when they outed Valerie Plame. Confirming a story first reported by Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna, MSNBC's David Shuster says that Plame was working on the Iranian nuclear threat when the White House blew her cover in the summer of 2003.
"Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran," Shuster reported Monday night on "Hardball." "And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well."
At the White House Correspondents' Association dinner last Saturday night, Shuster asked Wilson about Republican claims that Plame's outing had no national security implications. Wilson suggested that the CIA wouldn't have referred the case to the Justice Department if that had been the case, adding: "The leak of national security information is a betrayal, at a minimum, of one's security clearance, certainly of the public trust, and I can't understand why Mr. Rove remains on the payroll of the U.S. government."
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