CNN's Henry followed AP's lead, reported Wilson "suggested" Plame was not undercover at the time of Novak leak

CNN congressional correspondent Ed Henry repeated the false claim that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV "suggested" that his wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, was not undercover at the time columnist Robert D. Novak revealed her identity in a July 2003 column. Henry appeared to be referring to Wilson's comment in a July 14 interview on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," Wilson said. But the context of the interview demonstrates that Wilson was simply noting that Plame's identity was no longer secret after Novak publicly revealed it. In a June 15 article, the Associated Press similarly misconstrued this statement but soon after issued a correction to that effect.

From the July 15 edition of CNN's Inside Politics:

BETTY NGUYEN (anchor): And here's my question for you. Was Wilson's wife undercover at the time that her name was outed? And how does that factor in to all of this?

HENRY: Well, Joe Wilson himself suggested that she was not undercover at the time. We do not have independent verification of whether she was or wasn't, because she was undercover at some point, and we don't have the actual information of her entire time at the CIA.

As Media Matters for America has documented, multiple press outlets reported that Plame was an undercover CIA operative at the time Novak wrote his column.

—J.K.