Former U.S. deputy secretary of state sued by ex-CIA agent

Former CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame has added former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in her civil suit in the CIA leak case, CBS News reported Wednesday.

Armitage was sued for violating the Plame's constitutional right to privacy, according to the report.

However, the suit didn't accuse Armitage, who ranked number two in the State Department between 2002 and 2005, of participating in an administration conspiracy to blow Plame's cover.

Plame and her husband, former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, filed a lawsuit in July against Vice President Cheney, Cheyney's former chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Bush's political advisor Karl Rove, claiming that they had violated her constitutional rights and discredited her by disclosing that she was an undercover CIA operative.

Armitage admitted last week that he had inadvertently revealed Plame's identity to journalists in 2003, but insisted that there is no governmental conspiracy against Plame in the leak.

It took three years for the former deputy secretary of state to reveal his role in the case.

Plame's CIA status was disclosed by the media in July 2003, days after her husband accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat from weapons of mass destruction in an article published in The New York Times.

Since then Wilson has been alleging that the Bush administration leaked his wife's identity in retaliation for his article.

In December 2003, the U.S. Justice Department assigned Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to launch an investigation of the case and a number of White House aides and reporters were questioned after that.

Last October, Libby, the former chief of staff to Cheney, was charged for lying to investigators and a grand jury about his knowledge of Plame.

He faces trial in January 2007 on perjury and obstruction-of- justice charges.

Last month, Fitzgerald told Rove's lawyer that he had decided not to seek criminal charges against Rove.

U.S. media said investigators of the case have long known Armitage's involvement but Fitzgerald never commented on this and did not take any actions against him.

Source: Xinhua