Defense secretary says he was not Woodward's source

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld added his name Nov. 21 to the list of senior Bush administration officials who say they were not the source who told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that administration critic Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.\nRumsfeld said he never spoke to Woodward about either Wilson or Wilson's wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame. The Pentagon chief did say that, at the direction of President Bush, he spoke to Woodward while the reporter was working on book projects.\nWoodward says in June 2003, a highly placed administration official told him of Plame's CIA connection. Woodward has said the source was someone other than I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and the only person indicted in a federal investigation of the leak case. \n"This is quite amusing," Rumsfeld told "Fox News Sunday." "I was asked to speak with Mr. Woodward about a couple of books he's written, and I declined, and finally I was told by the White House, the president, that he thought I should meet with him. So I did. But I did it on the basis that there would be a transcript and it would be public, and both of the times that I've met with him, the transcript's there. It's public. You can go read it. And you won't find anything like that in it," Rumsfeld said.\nAn aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that Rice was not Woodward's source. Rice was Bush's national security adviser in June 2003. Rice's successor, Stephen Hadley, would not say if he was Woodward's source.\nBut Hadley volunteered Friday that some administration officials say he's not the leaker. The special prosecutor in the case is continuing his investigation and will present additional evidence to another grand jury, according to court papers filed Friday.\nThe investigation appeared to have cooled after charges were announced Oct. 28 against Libby, who has pleaded innocent. But last week Woodward disclosed that he had learned the CIA officer's identity from a top administration official before another journalist had published Plame's name.\nThe revelations from Woodward, who shared this information under oath with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald Nov. 14 contradict the prosecutor's earlier portrayal of Libby as the first government official to leak Plame's identity to reporters.\nA person familiar with the investigation has said that Cheney was not the unidentified source who told Woodward about Plame's CIA status.