Valerie Plame, left, and her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, sit in their convertible in this Nov. 18, 2003 photograph. (AP Photo/Vanity Fair, Jonas Karlsson, File)
Not since the days of the Clinton administration had so much journalistic energy been focused on the backroom dealings of the White House. No sex this time, but there were allegations of possible criminal activity at very high levels and the conviction of a top U.S. political adviser.
And America's role in the war in Iraq was at the heart of the matter.
Flashback to Jan. 28, 2003: The United States is a little more than two months away from attacking Iraq. On this night, President George W. Bush will give his annual state of the union address.
In that speech, Bush accused then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of trying to expand his nuclear program by acquiring uranium from Niger.
Six months later, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote in the New York Times that there was no evidence that Saddam had been trying to acquire uranium from Niger. Wilson had been sent to Africa a year earlier at the expense of the CIA to investigate such allegations.
Wilson criticized the Bush administration, saying it had twisted evidence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat in the months before the war.
Wilson's article in the New York Times cast doubt on one of Washington's key reasons for going to war - that Iraq was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
A little more than a week after the Times article, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote that senior Bush administration officials said Wilson's wife — Valerie Plame — was a CIA agent and that she was involved in the decision to send her husband to Africa.
A few days later, Time magazine's Matthew Cooper published a story that made similar allegations.
The stories blew Plame's cover by identifying her as an agent. They also struck at Wilson's credibility, suggesting his wife sent him on the Africa mission.
It is illegal to reveal the identity of a CIA operative, a crime whose punishment is up to 10 years in prison.
In late September 2003, the U.S. Justice Department ordered an investigation, led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, into whether a criminal act had been committed. Bush vowed that if the leak came from anyone in his administration, that person would be fired.
There was speculation that the leak had been one of Bush's closest advisors, Karl Rove, who denied it as strenuously as the administration denied it.
Still, the speculation did not go away. The investigation continued.
Within a year, the grand jury investigating the case had issued subpoenas to Time's Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times. Miller had been looking into the story, but never wrote anything about it.
Both reporters refused to co-operate with the investigation, saying they would not reveal their sources.
A judge ruled both reporters were in contempt of court.
On July 6, 2005, Miller was ordered jailed until she agreed to testify and reveal her sources - or the investigation ended. She remained in prison for 12 weeks.
Cooper avoided jail when he said he would testify because his source had signed a waiver.
The speculation surrounding Karl Rove intensified after an internal Time memo from two years earlier was released. It was written by Cooper, shortly after he met with his source on his original story. Part of it read:
"[I]t was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip."
Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said his client co-operated fully in the investigation and had done nothing wrong.
In June 2006, Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, told Luskin that Rove would not be facing any charges in the case.
After much speculation, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage admitted in September 2006 that he was the primary source for Novak's article. However, Armitage said that he did not know of Plame's covert status before he mentioned her in a "casual conversation" with Novak.
Armitage did not face criminal charges in connection with the leak, and cooperated at great length with the grand jury investigation.
The case of Vice-President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, did make it to the courts, though.
In October 2005, Libby was indicted on five counts resulting from the grand jury investigation into the Plame affair.
Libby was convicted on four charges — including obstruction of justice, making false statements to the FBI and two counts of perjury — 16 months later. He was found not guilty of making false statements to the FBI regarding a conversation with Time's Cooper.
In June 2007, a judge sentenced Libby to 30 months in jail. Bush bowed to pressures from U.S. conservatives and commuted that sentence a month later, citing the "excessive" prison term. His conviction stands, though, as does a $250,000 fine and two years probation.
After the Libby conviction, Fitzgerald said his probe into the Plame affair was finished.
"I do not expect to file any further charges," Fitzgerald was reported as saying. "We're all going back to our day jobs."
