Powell testifies in CIA leak investigation
Reuters, Warsaw
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken to a grand jury probing whether Bush aides leaked the name of a CIA agent to retaliate against her husband, an Iraq war critic, the State Department said Sunday. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Powell spoke to the grand jury on July 16 about the case of CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose name surfaced in a piece written by columnist Robert Novak after her husband raised questions in public about the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war. Boucher declined specific comment on the testimony but he stressed Powell had not talked to Novak about Plame. He said the secretary of state was not a subject of the investigation. Revealing such classified information is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Connecting the leak to any of President Bush's senior aides would be an embarrassment to the president in an election year.
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