That is the root of the affair that has sucked several journalists and deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove into its vortex, and why it is important.

In January 2003, President Bush told the world that British intelligence had uncovered a plot by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger. However, the evidence of the supposed Niger purchase has been debunked as a forgery.

In July 2003, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote in The New York Times that the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to check into the supposed purchase and he had reported it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had taken place. The administration should have known that, he argued.

Eight days later, Robert Novak wrote a column arguing that Wilson's mission was a low-level CIA affair, probably was unknown to CIA director George Tenet and was "less than definitive." The spin here was to discredit Wilson.

Novak also wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate [the uranium sale]."

That might have been the end of it, except that it is illegal to identify a covert CIA agent if the person outing the spy knows she is working under cover and that the government is trying to keep it that way. That is why a special prosecutor is investigating.

For months, the White House denied that Karl Rove outed Plame to Novak. The president and his chief spokesman said that any member of the administration who had done such a thing would be fired.

Now, Newsweek has reported that Rove talked to Time reporter Matt Cooper about Wilson and his wife in the days prior to Novak's column. So it looks as though Rove tried to discredit Wilson, but whether he deliberately outed Plame is unknown.

What we do know is that the White House misled the public about Rove's involvement in the spin cycle. But the question remains whether this is part of a larger pattern of deception that led the United States into war.