Powell Testifies In Leak Probe

The U.S. grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he is not a subject of the inquiry, the State Department said Sunday.

Department spokesman Richard Boucher, traveling with Powell on a diplomatic visit to Poland, said Powell appeared on July 16 at the grand jury's invitation. "The secretary is not a subject of inquiry," Boucher said. "He was pleased to cooperate with the grand jury."

Powell is the latest official from President Bush's administration to be called before the grand jury in Washington.

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and spokesman Scott McClellan have been summoned, and grand jury investigators have interviewed Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in their offices.

Powell's appearance was first reported Sunday by Newsweek.

The grand jury investigation is to determine who leaked the name of Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.

Novak revealed Plame's work for the CIA a week after her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, criticized Mr. Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger, a major uranium-exporting nation in Africa.

The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in mid-2002 to check the allegation, and he concluded it was unfounded. The administration has acknowledged that its inclusion in the State of the Union address was a mistake.

In printing Plame's name, Novak wrote that two administration officials said Wilson's wife suggested that he be sent to Niger.

Boucher referred questions about Powell's testimony to the Justice Department because grand jury operations are secret.

Asked whether Powell called or talked to Novak about Wilson's wife, Boucher said: "Of course not!"

There remains no evidence that Iraq actually did try to buy uranium. But two recent reports suggest it was reasonable for Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to believe that Iraq may have tried to do so.

A recent British report by Lord Butler — while finding that the intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons was "seriously flawed" — concluded that Mr. Bush's statement and a similar one by Blair were "well-founded."

The recent Senate Intelligence Committee report — which said most of the pre-war claims were not supported — cited various reports that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Thus, although Mr. Bush cited only British evidence that was determined to have been inconclusive, other intelligence files clearly contained other inconclusive evidence of the truth of the claim.

The committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, said he believed last year that the White House was correct in repudiating the uranium claim. "Now I don't know whether it's accurate or not. That's the whole question," Roberts, a Republican, said in an interview.

But the former diplomat, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, says the recent reports change nothing.

"I don't think that the body of the report sustains the conclusion that was suggested," Wilson told CBSNews.com last month, pointing to numerous cases in which CIA officials told administration officials about problems with the intelligence on the alleged uranium bid.

"All that suggests that the 16 words should not have been in the State of the Union," Wilson said.

The Africa claim came under scrutiny after the International Atomic Energy Agency determined that documents purportedly showing Iraq buying uranium from Niger were fake. The FBI is investigating those documents.