Page "Iraq disarmament timeline 1990–2003" Paragraph 284

* The CIA sent former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate the yellowcake claims.

He returned home and informed the CIA that the reports of yellowcake sales to Iraq were " unequivocally wrong.

" After the Bush administration repeatedly referenced the yellowcake claims as justification for war with Iraq, ambassador Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war.

Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, the identity of Wilson's wife, undercover CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed in a column by Robert Novak, in apparent retribution for Wilson going public with doubts about the yellowcake claims.

It is a felony to reveal the identity of a CIA agent, yet no one has been convicted as a result of Novak ’ s column, though I. Lewis ' Scooter ' Libby, Dick Cheney ’ s Chief of Staff, was convicted of perjury in the Plame leak investigation.