Why doesn't the FBI ask Cliff May who exposed CIA operative Valerie Plame?

If the Justice Department or anyone else wants to find out who blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the spouse of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who has been causing so much trouble for the Bush administration, they might ask Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neo-conservative outfit closely linked to pro-Likud hawks in the administration.

Aside from Wilson himself, May is the only person who has publicly claimed knowledge of Plame's employment at the CIA even before Robert Novak, the columnist who broke the story. Novak apparently acted at the behest of two "senior White House officials" who, according to a highly placed but unnamed source at the Washington Post, informed six reporters around the capital that Plame worked for the agency.

Writing in the National Review Online Sept. 29 – the same day that the Post confirmed the CIA had asked for a criminal investigation of Novak's source – May declared, somewhat enviously perhaps:

"That wasn't news to me. I had been told that – but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

May went further when he was interviewed by Fox News' John Gibson on the same day. "I knew this, and a lot of other people knew it," he said, implying that it wasn't only the one source who had informed him. snip

It's not clear whether May, if asked to identify his source, could dodge the question. While he once was a bona fide journalist, he is now primarily a lobbyist and thus not necessarily entitled to the exemptions granted columnist Novak. While May writes a weekly column for publication by some newspapers and is a contributor to the National Review, that may not be enough to exempt him. In any case, journalists and the FBI may find May's lead the most productive one available.

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