However, Judge Tatel added, "just as attorney-client communications made for the purpose of getting advice for the commission of a fraud or crime serve no public interest and receive no privilege, neither should courts protect sources whose leaks harm national security while providing minimal benefit to public debate."
A question seldom asked is how did Valerie take the news when she learned of Novak's column.
"She felt like she had been hit in the stomach," her husband Joe Wilson said on the October 30, 2005, 60 Minutes program. "It took her breath away," he said.
"She recovered quickly because," Wilson explained, "you don't do what she did for a living without understanding stress."
"And she became very matter of fact right afterwards," he said, "started making lists of what she had to do to ensure that her assets, her projects, her programs and her operations were protected."
"Did she realize then that her career as an undercover agent for the CIA was over? " interviewer Ed Bradley asked Wilson.
"Absolutely. Sure," he replied. "There was no doubt about it in her mind."
"And she wondered for what, " he added.
Fitzgerald and Libby's lawyers are currently fighting over Libby's discovery requests for a wide variety of documents. In a January 9, 2006 letter to Libby's legal team, Fitzgerald responded to a request for documents that assess the damage caused by the outing, and wrote: "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson 's status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document."
"Moreover," Fitzgerald said in a brief filed in the case, "the publication of any informal assessment of actual damage caused by the leak could compound the damage by disclosing intelligence sources and methods."
However, 3 intelligence officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to Larisa Alexandrovna, of Raw Story, said that while undercover, Valerie was involved in identifying and tracking WMD technology to and from Iran and that her outing compromised the identities of other covert operatives as well.
As a result, the officials said that CIA work on WMDs had been set back "ten years."
When the Libby indictment was handed down and it became known that Rove had definitely participated in blowing Valerie's cover, 16 former CIA and military intelligence officials petitioned Bush to suspend Rove's security clearance and Bush refused to grant their request.
After it became public that Rove was involved in the leak, on July 15, 2005, ninety-one Democrats in Congress signed a letter to Bush calling for Rove to explain his role in the leak or to resign, and 13 Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called for hearings on the matter.
To this day, Karl Rove remains unpunished and still has security clearance.
