Mike Allen and Dana Priest: "Bush administration is focus of inquiry; CIA Agents identity was leaked to media".

• Position: The Washington Monthly's Monthly Journalism Award

The Washington Post September 28,2003

In this story and several others by Allen which followed it, Allen and Priest revealed that the C A had asked the Justice Department to investigate which White House sources reported the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak in retribution for Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accusing the administration or over selling the link between Iraq and third would nuclear merchants. The piece, ground-breaking and deep, built upon an investigation into a story most of Washington's back journalists had given up on. It prompted a string of editorials from news outlets around the country calling for an independent investigation into the Plame affair. But all of this prompts a vexing question: Why did it take Allen and Priest's story to spur all those eager editorialists into action ? The only Hew information their story uncovered was the Justice Department...