Woodward testified about CIA leak

Woodward (r) made his name with Carl Bernstein covering Watergate

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has revealed he was told of a CIA agent's identity a month before it was publicly exposed in a newspaper column.

The leak of Valerie Plame's identity sparked an inquiry and the indictment of senior White House aide Lewis Libby.

Mr Woodward, made famous by Watergate, said he had told the special prosecutor that he had already heard about the agent from an unnamed official.

It means his source would be the first to have spoken to a reporter about her.

Ms Plame's identity was revealed in a column by journalist Robert Novak in July 2003.

Her husband - a former ambassador - had criticised the government's arguments for going to war in Iraq.

Questions raised

In a televised statement on Mr Libby's indictment, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said the vice-presidential aide had been the first known official to speak about the agent to a journalist.

Mr Woodward wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday that he had testified under oath for two hours about interviews he had had with three current or former administration officials in mid-June 2003.

Lewis Libby, who has resigned, has denied all the charges against him

He declined to say who had told him about the agent, but said it was not Mr Libby.

Mr Libby, who has resigned as Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, denies charges of perjury, making false statements and obstructing justice.

A spokesman for President George Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove - who faces continued investigation but has not been charged - said the source was not Mr Rove either.

William Jefress, one of Mr Libby's lawyers, said the latest revelations raised questions about his client's indictment.

Ms Plame's name was exposed by conservative columnist Robert Novak after her husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of distorting intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war to exaggerate the threat from Saddam Hussein's regime.

Mr Wilson accused the Bush administration of covering up the results of his inquiry into whether Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger.

Mr Bush included the Niger allegation in his State of the Union speech in which he accused Iraq of building weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Woodward made his name with colleague Carl Bernstein in the 1970s when they exposed the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.