title: Enough Said

text: Eva finds herself growing fonder of Albert and they have lunch with his teenage daughter, Tess, who, like Eva's daughter Ellen, is graduating from high school and moving away to attend college. A few days later, Eva goes to her massage appointment with Marianne and realizes that Albert is Marianne's ex-husband after Marianne tells a story about how he manages to pick out onions when scooping salsa — the same story Albert had told Eva, but about guacamole. Tess then arrives at the house and Eva's suspicions are confirmed. Marianne tries to introduce Eva to Tess, but Eva hides behind a tree to avoid the meeting. Eva continues seeing Albert, keeping her friendship with Marianne a secret; likewise, she does not tell Marianne that she is seeing him.


title: Enough Said

text: Eva encourages Marianne to voice her complaints about Albert so she can identify potential problems in her relationship with him. At the encouragement of Eva, Sarah and Will invite her and Albert to a dinner party, which ends badly after Eva nitpicks over Albert's faults, which upsets him. At another appointment with Marianne, Eva is exposed when Albert arrives to drop Tess off. He is angry that Eva kept her friendship with Marianne a secret, and breaks up with her.


title: Enough Said

text: Eva and her ex-husband take Ellen to the airport for her flight to college. A few months later, on Thanksgiving Day, Eva drives by Albert's home and stops in front of the house on her way to pick up Ellen from the airport. He sees her and she awkwardly waves. He eventually comes outside, to Eva's surprise, and sits with her on the porch while they begin to renew their relationship.


title: Enough Said

text: "Enough Said" was the fifth film written and directed by Nicole Holofcener. After the release of her fourth film, "Please Give" (2010), she was approached by Matthew Greenfield and Claudia Lewis from Fox Searchlight, who offered to produce Holofcener's next project on the condition that it was more mainstream than her previous films. She wrote three drafts of the screenplay over six months. The premise was partly inspired by Holofcener's own life as a divorced mother of two teenagers and her "feelings and fears about what [her] life will be like when [her] kids go away". While writing the film, she said, "I was having thoughts about my ex-husband and my new boyfriend and thinking about being married and how I'm trying to have a relationship that's happier the second time." Small details of the plot were also drawn from her life; Albert's guacamole-eating habit was inspired by a story that her boyfriend told her about his ex-wife.


title: Enough Said

text: Neither Julia Louis-Dreyfus nor James Gandolfini was Holofcener's first choice to play the lead roles. Louis-Dreyfus was cast after she approached Holofcener to express her interest in appearing in one of Holofcener's films. Holofcener's first choice as Albert was Louis C.K., who read part of the script but was not interested in the role. Gandolfini did not feel that he was right for the part, but Holofcener later described him as "perfect". Catherine Keener, who played Marianne, is a frequent collaborator of Holofcener's, having appeared in all four previous films that Holofcener had directed.


title: Enough Said

text: The film was shot on location over 24 days in Los Angeles, with a budget of $8 million. It was filmed by cinematographer Xavier Pérez Grobet, with whom Holofcener had previously worked on the HBO television series "Enlightened". Although each scene was scripted, the actors would often ad-lib lines of dialogue. The final scene of the film, in which Eva and Albert reunite in front of his house, was improvised by Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini. It was edited by Robert Frazen, Holofcener's boyfriend at the time, who had also worked on all four of her previous films.


title: Enough Said

text: Gandolfini died of a heart attack in June 2013, almost a year after production on the film had ended but before it was released. The film's editing was complete by then but Holofcener added a dedication to the end-credits reading "For Jim". Gandolfini never saw the completed film.


title: Enough Said

text: "Enough Said" premiered on September 7, 2013 at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released theatrically shortly thereafter on September 18, 2013. On its opening weekend, the film earned $240,000 from four theaters for a $60,000 per-theater average, ranking among 2013's best specialty release openers. It received a wide release on September 27 and gradually expanded to a peak of 835 theaters in late October. Over 121 days in theaters, the film grossed $17.6 million at the U.S. box office. It earned $7.7 million from other countries, making a total worldwide gross of $25.3 million.


title: Enough Said

text: The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray formats on January 14, 2014. The Blu-ray disc includes six making-of featurettes, titled "Second Takes", "Cast", "Story", "Meet Eva and Albert", "Nicole Holofcener" and "Julia".


title: Enough Said

text: "Enough Said" received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 95%, based on 190 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Wryly charming, impeccably acted, and ultimately quite bittersweet, "Enough Said" is a grown-up movie in the best possible way." Another review aggregation website, Metacritic, gave the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 44 critics, signifying "generally favorable reviews". Many critics also listed the film among their 10 best of the year.


title: Enough Said

text: Specifically, "Enough Said" was praised for its commitment to realism, both in the way Holofcener's characters converse and in the themes the film addresses. In a review for "The New York Times", A. O. Scott claimed that "Line for line, scene for scene, it is one of the best-written American film comedies in recent memory." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" felt that "Enough Said" demonstrated "Holofcener's gift for portraying life as it is lived", while David Denby, writing for "The New Yorker", wrote that it "approaches novelistic richness". In "The New York Times Book Review", Francine Prose praised Holofcener for having written characters "with sufficient depth and wisdom that ... the actors never seem to be movie stars impersonating people. Rather, they disappear into the vulnerable and self-doubting characters they play without a hint of the preening vanity that so often causes cinematic performances to seem forced and shallow."


title: Enough Said

text: Numerous critics also praised Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus's performances in the film. Ann Hornaday of "The Washington Post" wrote that Gandolfini brought "superb sensitivity and naked vulnerability" to his portrayal of Albert, while Indiewire's Eric Kohn felt that Gandolfini "truly blossoms" in the film. Writing for "The Wall Street Journal", Joe Morgenstern similarly described Gandolfini's performance as "marvelous" and "grounded in genial humanity", and found Louis-Dreyfus to be "equally endearing". Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe" wrote that Gandolfini gave "a performance of immense tenderness and charm", "as endearing as it is heartbreaking", and said of Louis-Dreyfus, "Holofcener brings out a vulnerability you may have forgotten was in this actress." "Slate" magazine's Dana Stevens, meanwhile, wrote that "There's no one making films right now who writes that kind of dialogue better than Holofcener ... And it's hard to imagine anyone speaking it better than Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus."


title: Enough Said

text: In a negative review for the "San Francisco Chronicle", Mick LaSalle wrote that he found Eva and Albert's romantic pairing implausible and, knowing that Gandolfini died after making the film, found the references to Albert's obesity "awkward and macabre and not at all enjoyable". The "Financial Times" Antonia Quirke, meanwhile, described the film as immemorable, "very modest" and "too depressing".


title: Enough Said

text: On the animated series "The Great North", Beef Tobin's favorite film is "Enough Said" and his continual replaying of it leads to his family developing cabin fever while being iced in.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Neuromorphic engineering, also known as neuromorphic computing, is the use of electronic circuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervous system. A neuromorphic computer/chip is any device that uses physical artificial neurons (made from silicon) to do computations. In recent times, the term "neuromorphic" has been used to describe analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, and software systems that implement models of neural systems (for perception, motor control, or multisensory integration). The implementation of neuromorphic computing on the hardware level can be realized by oxide-based memristors, spintronic memories, threshold switches, transistors, among others. Training software-based neuromorphic systems of spiking neural networks can be achieved using error backpropagation, e.g., using Python based frameworks such as snnTorch, or using canonical learning rules from the biological learning literature, e.g., using BindsNet.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: A key aspect of neuromorphic engineering is understanding how the morphology of individual neurons, circuits, applications, and overall architectures creates desirable computations, affects how information is represented, influences robustness to damage, incorporates learning and development, adapts to local change (plasticity), and facilitates evolutionary change.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Neuromorphic engineering is an interdisciplinary subject that takes inspiration from biology, physics, mathematics, computer science, and electronic engineering to design artificial neural systems, such as vision systems, head-eye systems, auditory processors, and autonomous robots, whose physical architecture and design principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. One of the first applications for neuromorphic engineering was proposed by Carver Mead in the late 1980s.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Neuromorphic engineering is for now set apart by the inspiration it takes from what we know about the structure and operations of the brain. Neuromorphic engineering translates what we know about the brain's function into computer systems. Work has mostly focused on replicating the analog nature of biological computation and the role of neurons in cognition.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The biological processes of neurons and their synapses are dauntingly complex, and thus very difficult to artificially simulate. A key feature of biological brains is that all of the processing in neurons uses analog chemical signals. This makes it hard to replicate brains in computers because the current generation of computers is completely digital. However, the characteristics of these parts can be abstracted into mathematical functions that closely capture the essence of the neuron's operations.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The goal of neuromorphic computing is not to perfectly mimic the brain and all of its functions, but instead to extract what is known of its structure and operations to be used in a practical computing system. No neuromorphic system will claim nor attempt to reproduce every element of neurons and synapses, but all adhere to the idea that computation is highly distributed throughout a series of small computing elements analogous to a neuron. While this sentiment is standard, researchers chase this goal with different methods.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: As early as 2006, researchers at Georgia Tech published a field programmable neural array. This chip was the first in a line of increasingly complex arrays of floating gate transistors that allowed programmability of charge on the gates of MOSFETs to model the channel-ion characteristics of neurons in the brain and was one of the first cases of a silicon programmable array of neurons.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: In November 2011, a group of MIT researchers created a computer chip that mimics the analog, ion-based communication in a synapse between two neurons using 400 transistors and standard CMOS manufacturing techniques.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: In June 2012, spintronic researchers at Purdue University presented a paper on the design of a neuromorphic chip using lateral spin valves and memristors. They argue that the architecture works similarly to neurons and can therefore be used to test methods of reproducing the brain's processing. In addition, these chips are significantly more energy-efficient than conventional ones.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Research at HP Labs on Mott memristors has shown that while they can be non-volatile, the volatile behavior exhibited at temperatures significantly below the phase transition temperature can be exploited to fabricate a neuristor, a biologically-inspired device that mimics behavior found in neurons. In September 2013, they presented models and simulations that show how the spiking behavior of these neuristors can be used to form the components required for a Turing machine.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Neurogrid, built by "Brains in Silicon" at Stanford University, is an example of hardware designed using neuromorphic engineering principles. The circuit board is composed of 16 custom-designed chips, referred to as NeuroCores. Each NeuroCore's analog circuitry is designed to emulate neural elements for 65536 neurons, maximizing energy efficiency. The emulated neurons are connected using digital circuitry designed to maximize spiking throughput.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: A research project with implications for neuromorphic engineering is the Human Brain Project that is attempting to simulate a complete human brain in a supercomputer using biological data. It is made up of a group of researchers in neuroscience, medicine, and computing. Henry Markram, the project's co-director, has stated that the project proposes to establish a foundation to explore and understand the brain and its diseases, and to use that knowledge to build new computing technologies. The three primary goals of the project are to better understand how the pieces of the brain fit and work together, to understand how to objectively diagnose and treat brain diseases, and to use the understanding of the human brain to develop neuromorphic computers. That the simulation of a complete human brain will require a supercomputer a thousand times more powerful than today's encourages the current focus on neuromorphic computers. $1.3 billion has been allocated to the project by The European Commission.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Other research with implications for neuromorphic engineering involve the BRAIN Initiative and the TrueNorth chip from IBM. Neuromorphic devices have also been demonstrated using nanocrystals, nanowires, and conducting polymers. There also is development of a memristive device for quantum neuromorphic architectures. In 2022, researchers at MIT have reported the development of brain-inspired artificial synapses, using the ion proton (), for 'analog deep learning'.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Intel unveiled its neuromorphic research chip, called “Loihi”, in October 2017. The chip uses an asynchronous spiking neural network (SNN) to implement adaptive self-modifying event-driven fine-grained parallel computations used to implement learning and inference with high efficiency.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: IMEC, a Belgium-based nanoelectronics research center, demonstrated the world's first self-learning neuromorphic chip. The brain-inspired chip, based on OxRAM technology, has the capability of self-learning and has been demonstrated to have the ability to compose music. IMEC released the 30-second tune composed by the prototype. The chip was sequentially loaded with songs in the same time signature and style. The songs were old Belgian and French flute minuets, from which the chip learned the rules at play and then applied them.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The Blue Brain Project, led by Henry Markram, aims to build biologically detailed digital reconstructions and simulations of the mouse brain. The Blue Brain Project has created in silico models of rodent brains, while attempting to replicate as many details about its biology as possible. The supercomputer-based simulations offer new perspectives on understanding the structure and functions of the brain.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The European Union funded a series of projects at the University of Heidelberg, which led to the development of


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: BrainScaleS (brain-inspired multiscale computation in neuromorphic hybrid systems), a hybrid analog neuromorphic supercomputer located at Heidelberg University, Germany. It was developed as part of the Human Brain Project neuromorphic computing platform and is the complement to the SpiNNaker supercomputer (which is based on digital technology). The architecture used in BrainScaleS mimics biological neurons and their connections on a physical level; additionally, since the components are made of silicon, these model neurons operate on average 864 times (24 hours of real time is 100 seconds in the machine simulation) that of their biological counterparts.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The concept of neuromorphic systems can be extended to sensors (not just to computation). An example of this applied to detecting light is the retinomorphic sensor or, when employed in an array, the event camera. In 2022, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research reported an organic artificial spiking neuron that exhibits the signal diversity of biological neurons while operating in the biological wetware, thus enabling "in-situ" neuromorphic sensing and biointerfacing applications.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: While the interdisciplinary concept of neuromorphic engineering is relatively new, many of the same ethical considerations apply to neuromorphic systems as apply to human-like machines and artificial intelligence in general. However, the fact that neuromorphic systems are designed to mimic a human brain gives rise to unique ethical questions surrounding their usage.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: However, the practical debate is that neuromorphic hardware as well as artificial "neural networks" are immensely simplified models of how the brain operates or processes information at a much lower complexity in terms of size and functional technology and a much more regular structure in terms of connectivity. Comparing neuromorphic chips to the brain is a very crude comparison similar to comparing a plane to a bird just because they both have wings and a tail. The fact is that neural cognitive systems are many orders of magnitude more energy- and compute-efficient than current state-of-the-art AI and neuromorphic engineering is an attempt to narrow this gap by inspiring from the brain's mechanism just like many engineering designs have bio-inspired features.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Significant ethical limitations may be placed on neuromorphic engineering due to public perception. Special Eurobarometer 382: Public Attitudes Towards Robots, a survey conducted by the European Commission, found that 60% of European Union citizens wanted a ban of robots in the care of children, the elderly, or the disabled. Furthermore, 34% were in favor of a ban on robots in education, 27% in healthcare, and 20% in leisure. The European Commission classifies these areas as notably “human.” The report cites increased public concern with robots that are able to mimic or replicate human functions. Neuromorphic engineering, by definition, is designed to replicate the function of the human brain.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The social concerns surrounding neuromorphic engineering are likely to become even more profound in the future. The European Commission found that EU citizens between the ages of 15 and 24 are more likely to think of robots as human-like (as opposed to instrument-like) than EU citizens over the age of 55. When presented an image of a robot that had been defined as human-like, 75% of EU citizens aged 15–24 said it corresponded with the idea they had of robots while only 57% of EU citizens over the age of 55 responded the same way. The human-like nature of neuromorphic systems, therefore, could place them in the categories of robots many EU citizens would like to see banned in the future.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: As neuromorphic systems have become increasingly advanced, some scholars have advocated for granting personhood rights to these systems. If the brain is what grants humans their personhood, to what extent does a neuromorphic system have to mimic the human brain to be granted personhood rights? Critics of technology development in the Human Brain Project, which aims to advance brain-inspired computing, have argued that advancement in neuromorphic computing could lead to machine consciousness or personhood. If these systems are to be treated as people, critics argue, then many tasks humans perform using neuromorphic systems, including the act of termination of neuromorphic systems, may be morally impermissible as these acts would violate the autonomy of the neuromorphic systems.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, a branch of the U.S. military, is a center dedicated to the procurement and implementation of AI software and neuromorphic hardware for combat use. Specific applications include smart headsets/goggles and robots. JAIC intends to rely heavily on neuromorphic technology to connect "every sensor (to) every shooter" within a network of neuromorphic-enabled units.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Skeptics have argued that there is no way to apply the electronic personhood, the concept of personhood that would apply to neuromorphic technology, legally. In a letter signed by 285 experts in law, robotics, medicine, and ethics opposing a European Commission proposal to recognize “smart robots” as legal persons, the authors write, “A legal status for a robot can’t derive from the Natural Person model, since the robot would then hold human rights, such as the right to dignity, the right to its integrity, the right to remuneration or the right to citizenship, thus directly confronting the Human rights. This would be in contradiction with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.”


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: There is significant legal debate around property rights and artificial intelligence. In "Acohs Pty Ltd v. Ucorp Pty Ltd", Justice Christopher Jessup of the Federal Court of Australia found that the source code for Material Safety Data Sheets could not be copyrighted as it was generated by a software interface rather than a human author. The same question may apply to neuromorphic systems: if a neuromorphic system successfully mimics a human brain and produces a piece of original work, who, if anyone, should be able to claim ownership of the work?


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: Neuromemristive systems is a subclass of neuromorphic computing systems that focuses on the use of memristors to implement neuroplasticity. While neuromorphic engineering focuses on mimicking biological behavior, neuromemristive systems focus on abstraction. For example, a neuromemristive system may replace the details of a cortical microcircuit's behavior with an abstract neural network model.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: There exist several neuron inspired threshold logic functions implemented with memristors that have applications in high level pattern recognition applications. Some of the applications reported recently include speech recognition, face recognition and object recognition. They also find applications in replacing conventional digital logic gates.


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: For (quasi)ideal passive memristive circuits, there is an exact equation (Caravelli-Traversa-Di Ventra equation) for the internal memory of the circuit:


title: Neuromorphic engineering

text: as a function of the properties of the physical memristive network and the external sources. In the case of ideal memristors, formula_2. In the equation above, formula_3 is the "forgetting" time scale constant, formula_4 is the ratio of "off" and "on" values of the limit resistances of the memristors, formula_5 is the vector of the sources of the circuit and formula_6 is a projector on the fundamental loops of the circuit. The constant formula_7 has the dimension of a voltage and is associated to the properties of the memristor; its physical origin is the charge mobility in the conductor. The diagonal matrix and vector formula_8 and formula_9 respectively, are instead the internal value of the memristors, with values between 0 and 1. This equation thus requires adding extra constraints on the memory values in order to be reliable.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The Maquis () were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called "maquisards", during the Nazi occupation of France in World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class, men who had escaped into the mountains and woods to avoid conscription into Vichy France's "Service du travail obligatoire" ("Compulsory Work Service" or "STO") to provide forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with scrub growth called "maquis" (scrubland).


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Although strictly speaking it means thicket, "maquis" could be roughly translated as "the bush"; in Corsica, the saying "prendre le maquis" 'to go into the bush' is used to describe someone who leaves the village in order to live in the bush, either biding time to seek revenge, or while being pursued by others with an intent to arrest or kill. Historians have not established how this Corsican term arrived on the mainland of France, but observe that:


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The term "maquis" signified both the group of fighters and their rural location. Members of those bands were called "maquisards". Their image was a committed and voluntary fighter, a "combattant", as opposed to the previous "réfractaire" ("unmanageable"). The term became an honorific meaning "armed resistance fighter". The maquis came to symbolize the French Resistance. The word Maquis describes resistance groups that fought in France before the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Once the Allies had secured a foothold in France the government of Free France attempted to unite the separate groups of Maquis under the banner of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The national denomination given to all maquis forces during the war is "F.F.I.", for "Forces françaises de l'intérieur". This large corp of about 400,000 active members (in 1944) is to be divided in three major sections, corresponding to three political or professional inclinations:


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: All three groups were deemed "terrorists" by the official French government in Vichy and by the German authorities and other neighbouring fascist regimes. Other (rare) local groups did not affiliate with these organisations.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France, especially in the Alps and in Limousin. They relied on guerrilla tactics to harass the Milice and German occupation troops. The Maquis also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree of sympathy or cooperation from the local populace. In March 1944, the German army began a terror campaign throughout France. This included reprisals against civilians living in areas where the French resistance was active, such as the Oradour-sur-Glane, Maillé and Tulle massacres by SS troops. The Maquisards were later to take their revenge in the "épuration sauvage" that took place after the war's end.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Most of the Maquis cells—like the Maquis du Limousin or the Maquis du Vercors—took names after the area they were operating in. The size of these cells varied from tens to thousands of men and women.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Politically, the Maquis included socialists, communists, and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France were composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Spanish Civil War veteran Carlos Romero Giménez was a centrist republican operating from Bordeaux.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: According to Matthew Cobb, the Communist maquis groups adopted more active and immediate guerrilla tactics to combat the Nazis, while the groups affiliated with De Gaulle were asked to wait for a larger attack later in the war. Thus, some maquis joined Communist groups simply to be part of a more active resistance movement and not because of their politics. Georges Guingouin was one of the most active Communist maquis leaders.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped the Maquis who were affiliated with the Free French with supplies and agents, but not the Communist maquis groups. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to send its own agents to France in cooperation with the SOE and the French BCRA agents, as part of Operation Jedburgh.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The Maquis had many different sub groups with their own objectives and political affiliations. In 1944, an OSS agent, Robert R. Kehoe, was embedded within a group of Maquis and described the organization as “Fractured.” Also saying “the various components were quite independent, with members loyal to their own leaders and to the political forces behind them”


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Examples of the independence of separate Maquis groups can be found all throughout France during the Second World War. For example, Maquis groups in Brittany often did not speak French and were focused on the expulsion of German forces from their region and not from France as a whole. As they did not operate like a normal resistance organization due to their lack of centralization, the Maquis would not be able to accomplish as much as the Allied nations had hoped.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Prior to the inception of the maquis, small resistance groups were created in the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. In northern and western France, movements like "Organisation civile et militaire", "Libération-Nord", "Ceux de la Libération", "Ceux de la Résistance" survived through clandestine pamphlets or newspapers, to build up a solidarity of attitudes and disparate actions and to taunt the Germans ("narguer les Allemands"). Some of these movements also began to hide weapons and plot sabotage. In the Zone Libre, movements were created as early as in the north and west but did not face decimating raids by the authorities, which allowed movements like "Combat", "Libération-Sud" and "Franc-Tireur" to have a more expansive character".


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Resistance groups in the occupied zone eventually became linked to the Free French in London or the Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Britain to undermine Nazi-occupied Europe with specially trained agents. By May 1941, the northern movements, who specialized in sabotage and espionage and the southern movements, who focused on planning escape routes, developed the only major movement common to both, the "Front National". Resistance became closely linked with the effects of the occupation and Vichy legislation and as the working class became alienated "resisters and people on the run could be harboured with a degree of safety" in the rural areas of France, resistance had a role and justification in the lives of many people "who had no ambition to hold a gun, or memorize a coded message, though as the occupation grew in its violence the pressure on the French people to defend themselves by force intensified, and the military nature of resistance came to predominate". The connection between the Vichy government and armed resistance paved the way for the eventual formation of the Maquis.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The "Service du travail obligatoire" (STO) was enacted on 16 February 1943 but underwent various refinements and classifications. It required young men born between 1920 and 1922 to register at their "mairies" (town halls), whereupon the authorities “listed several categories of workers, divided them into those who were exempt, those who would be liable for compulsory service in Germany, and those who would have to work for German industries in France”. In the first few months, reports suggest that there were many who refused STO and went into hiding, mostly in areas where people hid Jews and resisters. These first few months of refusal of STO, and the "embryonic camps and groupings that resulted" contributed to the eventual emergence of the mystique and discourse of "le maquis".


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Politically motivated anti-fascists, immigrant workers on the run, the "réfractaires" and Spanish Civil War veterans, along with the leniency of the Vichy administration's pursuit of "réfractaires", contributed to the emergence of an aggressive movement, with a combative discourse and a romantic mystique of rural revolt. The speed with which the term ‘"maquis"’ spread was astonishing, since the concept did not exist in January 1943. By June, talk of the "maquis" made its way from south-eastern France to the plains of northern France. The Maquis eventually became the national service, due to the large influx of young people in revolt against the STO. This unification was due, in part, to Michel Brault, a Parisian lawyer, who headed the organization of the resisters in April 1943, and to the drafted circulars establishing the Maquis’s charter. Within one month, 20,000 copies of the text — which did not exceed the size of a playing card — were distributed throughout the southern zone". Brault, in a report sent to London on 14 February 1944, listed the various elements available for action to the Allies and described the Maquis as "youths who have rebelled against the STO as well as men of all ages who have given up trying to live a normal life[...]. They totalled about 48,000".


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The "Maquis de l'Ain", captained by Henri Petit (alias Romans), organized a network of camps in the dense forests in the mountainous regions of the "Bugey" and the lower regions of La Bresse, without creating a fixed camp. This gave The enemy would not be able to surprise the maquis because the views from the hills were extensive, but some enjoyed this advantage and stayed in the same sites for months, defying their own rules of mobility. Guerrilla warfare practised by the maquis “created a psychosis of fear within the enemy [...], giving an impression of numbers and strength which was more illusory than real".


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The Maquis de l'Ain’s effectiveness was honed at the training school they opened at Gorges above Mongriffon in June 1943. Captain Romans described the situation:


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: In the control for rural areas, the maquisards, in their role as the hunted, "gradually made the terrain of the hunt unpredictable for the hunters", and eventually dangerous. The Maquis’s goal was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the 'hunters' and the 'hunted'.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: During the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Maquis and other groups played some role in delaying the German mobilization. The French Resistance (FFI "Forces Françaises de l'Interieur" for "French Forces of the Interior") blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the Atlantic coast. Coded messages transmitted over the BBC radio alerted the maquis of the impending D-Day with seemingly meaningless messages such as "the crow will sing three times in the morning" read in a continuous flow over the British airwaves. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. For example, Nancy Wake's group of 7,000 maquisards was involved in a pitched battle with 22,000 Germans on 20 June 1944. Some Maquis groups took no prisoners so some German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers rather than maquisards.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The Allied offensive was slowed and the Germans were able to counterattack in southeast France. On the Vercors Massif, the Maquis du Vercors rose up with some 4000 soldiers against the German occupiers, but was defeated with 600 casualties.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: When General De Gaulle dismissed resistance organizations after the liberation of Paris, many maquisards returned to their homes though many also joined the new French army.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Although the Maquis used whatever arms they could get, the groups affiliated with the Free French relied heavily on airdrops of weapons and explosives from the British SOE. SOE parachuted agents in with wireless sets (for radio communication) and dropped containers with various munitions including Sten guns, pencil detonators, plastic explosives, Welrod pistols (a silenced specialized assassination weapon favored by covert operatives) and assorted small arms such as pistols, rifles and sub-machine guns. The Maquis also used German weapons captured throughout the occupation; the Mauser 98k rifle and MP 40 submachine gun were very common. The French Militia ("Milice française"), who was well equipped by the French state, was also a target of maquis actions wherever available.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: The maquis were clandestine groups which did not wear uniforms, so as to blend in the population. However, over time many started wearing the Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion but distinctive enough to be effective.


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: In leadership and the more technical aspects of leading a resistance group women were often more involved in the Maquis than men, helping the front line fighters. It was very common for young educated women to be used as couriers from one maquis group to another. Young women were chosen because they were more inconspicuous than men and could often pass through German checkpoints without being stopped or questioned. Allied operatives working with the maquis described the women of the Maquis helping of the fighters as “the lifeblood of the resistance, furnishing information, passing instructions, and arranging for food and supplies.”


title: Maquis (World War II)

text: Many individuals claimed membership in the maquis to escape being labeled Nazi collaborators. Operations carried out by the maquis were often inefficient and meant to grab attention, not destroy key military targets. Allied intelligence received reports that the maquis would use explosives on targets that did not require them, to make their actions heard. Lack of centralization led to groups taking action to garner attention so that more members would join and they would receive more supplies from the Allied war effort. Some actions taken by these splintered groups were not always in favor of the larger war effort. Another controversy was their harsh punishment of German prisoners and French collaborators. In one instance recorded by an American OSS agent embedded in the maquis, a group of fighters had captured three French men accused of collaborating with the Germans and giving them information about the Maquis location. The agent describes one man’s punishment saying, “he was tied up in public before he was subsequently beaten and shot.” There are also reports of French Maquis units which executed German prisoners.


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: Lee Sung-jae (born August 23, 1970) is a South Korean actor. Among his notable works include the films "Art Museum by the Zoo", "Attack the Gas Station", "Barking Dogs Never Bite", and "Kick the Moon", as well as the television series "Lie" and "How Long I've Kissed".


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: Lee Sung-jae in a short period rose to become one of the more versatile and popular actors in Korean cinema. After working for a time on TV (his debut was the MBC drama "The Love of Two Women"), he launched his film career with the romantic comedy "Art Museum by the Zoo" opposite superstar Shim Eun-ha. The success of this movie gave him considerable attention and led to him being offered many more roles.


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: After starring in "Ghost in Love" opposite Kim Hee-sun, Lee rose to prominence as the leader of a small group of thugs in one of the biggest box-office hits of the late 1990s, Kim Sang-jin's smash comedy "Attack the Gas Station". Shortly thereafter he took a role in a very different kind of film, the accomplished black comedy "Barking Dogs Never Bite", and his portrayal of a dog-hating lecturer who desperately wants to become a professor received good reviews.


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: In 2001, Lee acted opposite Ko So-young in "A Day", a drama about a young married couple who wish to have a baby; he then appeared alongside Cha Seung-won and Kim Hye-soo in "Kick the Moon", another wildly popular comedy by Kim Sang-jin. Lee also had a memorable turn as the villain in "Public Enemy", a hugely successful film by hit director and Cinema Service founder Kang Woo-suk.


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: In 2004 Lee portrayed a mountain climber in the big-budget adventure/melodrama "Ice Rain", which was shot in the Canadian Rockies, then played a ballroom dancer in "Dance with the Wind", Park Jung-woo's directorial debut (Park wrote the screenplay for many of Kim Sang-jin's films). Other notable roles include real-life fugitive Ji Kang-hun in 2006's "Holiday", and a sculptor in 2010 3D erotic film "Natalie".


title: Lee Sung-jae

text: Among the television series he's starred in include 2008 romantic comedy "Lawyers of the Great Republic of Korea", and 2012 hit cable drama "How Long I've Kissed".


title: Time and motion study

text: A time and motion study (or time-motion study) is a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth (the same couple as is best known through the biographical 1950 film and book "Cheaper by the Dozen"). It is a major part of scientific management (Taylorism). After its first introduction, time study developed in the direction of establishing standard times, while motion study evolved into a technique for improving work methods. The two techniques became integrated and refined into a widely accepted method applicable to the improvement and upgrading of work systems. This integrated approach to work system improvement is known as methods engineering and it is applied today to industrial as well as service organizations, including banks, schools and hospitals.


title: Time and motion study

text: Time study is a direct and continuous observation of a task, using a timekeeping device (e.g., decimal minute stopwatch, computer-assisted electronic stopwatch, and videotape camera) to record the time taken to accomplish a task and it is often used when:


title: Time and motion study

text: The Industrial Engineering Terminology Standard, defines time study as "a work measurement technique consisting of careful time measurement of the task with a time measuring instrument, adjusted for any observed variance from normal effort or pace and to allow adequate time for such items as foreign elements, unavoidable or machine delays, rest to overcome fatigue, and personal needs."


title: Time and motion study

text: The systems of time and motion studies are frequently assumed to be interchangeable terms, descriptive of equivalent theories. However, the underlying principles and the rationale for the establishment of each respective method are dissimilar, despite originating within the same school of thought.


title: Time and motion study

text: The application of science to business problems, and the use of time-study methods in standard setting and the planning of work, was pioneered by Frederick Winslow Taylor. Taylor liaised with factory managers and from the success of these discussions wrote several papers proposing the use of wage-contingent performance standards based on scientific time study. At its most basic level time studies involved breaking down each job into component parts, timing each part and rearranging the parts into the most efficient method of working. By counting and calculating, Taylor wanted to transform management, which was essentially an oral tradition, into a set of calculated and written techniques.


title: Time and motion study

text: Taylor and his colleagues placed emphasis on the content of a fair day's work, and sought to maximize productivity irrespective of the physiological cost to the worker. For example, Taylor thought unproductive time usage (soldiering) to be the deliberate attempt of workers to promote their best interests and to keep employers ignorant of how fast work could be carried out. This instrumental view of human behavior by Taylor prepared the path for human relations to supersede scientific management in terms of literary success and managerial application.


title: Time and motion study

text: The collection of time data can be done in several ways, depending on study goal and environmental conditions. Time and motion data can be captured with a common stopwatch, a handheld computer or a video recorder. There are a number of dedicated software packages used to turn a palmtop or a handheld PC into a time study device. As an alternative, time and motion data can be collected automatically from the memory of computer-control machines (i.e. automated time studies).


title: Time and motion study

text: In response to Taylor's time studies and view of human nature, many strong criticisms and reactions were recorded. Unions, for example, regarded time study as a disguised tool of management designed to standardize and intensify the pace of production. Similarly, individuals such as Gilbreth (1909), Cadbury and Marshall heavily criticized Taylor and pervaded his work with subjectivity. For example, Cadbury in reply to Thompson stated that under scientific management employee skills and initiatives are passed from the individual to management, a view reiterated by Nyland. In addition, Taylor's critics condemned the lack of scientific substance in his time studies, in the sense that they relied heavily on individual interpretations of what workers actually do. However, the value in rationalizing production is indisputable and supported by academics such as Gantt, Ford and Munsterberg, and Taylor society members Mr C.G. Renold, Mr W.H. Jackson and Mr C.B. Thompson.


title: Time and motion study

text: Proper time studies are based on repeated observation, so that motions performed on the same part differently by one or many workers can be recorded, to determine those values that are truly repetitive and measurable.


title: Time and motion study

text: In contrast to, and motivated by, Taylor's time study methods, the Gilbreths proposed a technical language, allowing for the analysis of the labor process in a scientific context. The Gilbreths made use of scientific insights to develop a study method based upon the analysis of "work motions", consisting in part of filming the details of a worker's activities and their body posture while recording the time. The films served two main purposes. One was the visual record of how work had been done, emphasizing areas for improvement. Secondly, the films also served the purpose of training workers about the best way to perform their work. This method allowed the Gilbreths to build on the best elements of these workflows and to create a standardized best practice.


title: Time and motion study

text: Although for Taylor, motion studies remained subordinate to time studies, the attention he paid to the motion study technique demonstrated the seriousness with which he considered the Gilbreths’ method. The split with Taylor in 1914, on the basis of attitudes to workers, meant the Gilbreths had to argue contrary to the trade unionists, government commissions and Robert Hoxie who believed scientific management was unstoppable. The Gilbreths were charged with the task of proving that motion study particularly, and scientific management generally, increased industrial output in ways which improved and did not detract from workers' mental and physical strength. This was no simple task given the propaganda fuelling the Hoxie report and the consequent union opposition to scientific management. In addition, the Gilbreths credibility and academic success continued to be hampered by Taylor who held the view that motion studies were nothing more than a continuation of his work.


title: Time and motion study

text: While both Taylor and the Gilbreths continue to be criticized for their respective work, it should be remembered that they were writing at a time of industrial reorganization and the emergence of large, complex organizations with new forms of technology. Furthermore, to equate scientific management merely with time and motion study and consequently labor control not only misconceives the scope of scientific management, but also misinterprets Taylor's incentives for proposing a different style of managerial thought.


title: Time and motion study

text: A health care time and motion study is used to research and track the efficiency and quality of health care workers. In the case of nurses, numerous programs have been initiated to increase the percent of a shift nurses spend providing direct care to patients. Prior to interventions nurses were found to spend ~20% of their time doing direct care. After focused intervention, some hospitals doubled that number, with some even exceeding 70% of shift time with patients, resulting in reduced errors, codes, and falls.


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: Alpha-adrenergic agonists are a class of sympathomimetic agents that selectively stimulates alpha adrenergic receptors. The alpha-adrenergic receptor has two subclasses α and α. Alpha 2 receptors are associated with sympatholytic properties. Alpha-adrenergic agonists have the opposite function of alpha blockers. Alpha adrenoreceptor ligands mimic the action of epinephrine and norepinephrine signaling in the heart, smooth muscle and central nervous system, with norepinephrine being the highest affinity. The activation of α stimulates the membrane bound enzyme phospholipase C, and activation of α inhibits the enzyme adenylate cyclase. Inactivation of adenylate cyclase in turn leads to the inactivation of the secondary messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate and induces smooth muscle and blood vessel constriction.


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: Although complete selectivity between receptor agonism is rarely achieved, some agents have partial selectivity. NB: the inclusion of a drug in each category just indicates the activity of the drug at that receptor, not necessarily the selectivity of the drug (unless otherwise noted).


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: α agonist: stimulates phospholipase C activity. (vasoconstriction and mydriasis; used as vasopressors, nasal decongestants and during eye exams). Selected examples are:


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: α agonist: inhibits adenylyl cyclase activity, reduces brainstem vasomotor center-mediated CNS activation; used as antihypertensive, sedative & treatment of opiate dependence and alcohol withdrawal symptoms). Selected examples are:


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: Alpha-adrenergic agonists, more specifically the auto receptors of alpha 2 neurons, are used in the treatment of glaucoma by decreasing the production of aqueous fluid by the ciliary bodies of the eye and also by increasing uveoscleral outflow. Medications such as clonidine and dexmedetomidine target pre-synaptic auto receptors, therefore leading to an overall decrease in norepinephrine which clinically can cause effects such as sedation, analgesia, lowering of blood pressure and bradycardia. There is also low quality evidence that they can reduce shivering post operatively


title: Alpha-adrenergic agonist

text: The reduction of the stress response caused by alpha 2 agonists were theorised to be beneficial peri operatively by reducing cardiac complications, however this has shown not to be clinically effective as there was no reduction in cardiac events or mortality but there was an increased incidence of hypotension and bradycardia


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: Zeishan Quadri is an Indian writer, actor, director and producer who wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay for the Bollywood crime genre film "Gangs of Wasseypur", directed by Anurag Kashyap. Quadri has also acted in "Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 2". He has directed and produced the film "Meeruthiya Gangsters".


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: Zeishan Quadri was born in Wasseypur, Dhanbad, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) in 1983. He is the only son and the youngest child of Syed Imran Quadri, a civil engineer. Quadri grew up in a strict and protective environment. He has two elder sisters. Quadri was educated in Dhanbad. Quadri left Dhanbad to study for Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Meerut. Quadri worked in a call center and for HCL computers in Delhi for 18 months before coming to Mumbai in 2008.


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: In 2009, Quadri moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting. Quadri studied world cinema including film makers such as Majid Majidi, Fateh Akın and Akira Kurosawa. Quadri has worked in the genre of Bollywood crime films. His film "Revolver Rani" was directed by Sai Kabir and starred Kangana Ranaut and vir Das.


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: His first film as a director and producer was "Meeruthiya Gangsters". The editing of the film has been done by veteran filmmaker Anurag Kashyap who presented the film along with Prateek Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. Quadri visited many cities for the promotion of the film including Aligarh at Aligarh Muslim University.


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: In 2014, Quadri acted in a movie directed by Vipin Sharma and produced by Bohra bros, as well as a negative lead in the upcoming movie "Banana" directed by Sajid Ali, produced by John Abraham Entertainment. He is also working on a script with Madhur Bhandarkar for his upcoming movie "Madamji" starring Priyanka Chopra. He has written a script "Oh Womaniya" for Pritish Nandy Communications to be helmed by Anu Menon, and a script for Fardeen Khan Productions tentatively titled "Firauti".


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: According to "Mumbai Mirror", Anurag Kashyap and Quadri are collaborating on the third installment of the "Gangs of Wasseypur" franchise, with Kashyap insisting that Quadri writes and directs the film. Quadri initially planned to produce "Sarbjit", and brought in Omung Kumar, who directed the film released in 2016. Quadri and Ekta Kapoor are collaborating on a new non-fiction TV series.


title: Zeishan Quadri

text: "Gangs of Wasseypur" is based on real life events in the coal rich city of Dhanbad. It is a story about the "coal mafia" that spans several generations from 1941 to 2010 in two parts. On 30 May 2009, Quadri's story was sold to Anurag Kashyap. Quadri negotiated to write the script and play the character "Definite" in the second part.


title: Plame affair

text: The Plame affair (also known as the CIA leak scandal and Plamegate) was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.


title: Plame affair

text: In 2002, Plame wrote a memo to her superiors in which she expressed hesitation in recommending her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, to the CIA for a mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had arranged to purchase and import uranium from the country, but stated that he "may be in a position to assist". After President George W. Bush stated that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson published a July 2003 op-ed in "The New York Times" stating his doubts during the mission that any such transaction with Iraq had taken place.


title: Plame affair

text: A week after Wilson's op-ed was published, Novak published a column in "The Washington Post" which mentioned claims from "two senior administration officials" that Plame had been the one to suggest sending her husband. Novak had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage. David Corn and others suggested that Armitage and other officials had leaked the information as political retribution for Wilson's article.


title: Plame affair

text: The scandal led to a criminal investigation; no one was charged for the leak itself. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush, and he was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2018.


title: Plame affair

text: In late February 2002, responding to inquiries from the Vice President's office and the Departments of State and Defense about the allegation that Iraq had a sales agreement to buy uranium in the form of yellowcake from Niger, the Central Intelligence Agency had authorized a trip by Joseph C. Wilson to Niger to investigate the possibility. The former Prime Minister of Niger, Ibrahim Hassane Mayaki, reported to Wilson that he was unaware of any contracts for uranium sales to rogue states, though he was approached by a businessman on behalf of an Iraqi delegation about "expanding commercial relations" with Iraq, which Mayaki interpreted to mean uranium sales. Wilson ultimately concluded that there "was nothing to the story", and reported his findings in March 2002.


title: Plame affair

text: In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address, US President George W. Bush said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."


title: Plame affair

text: After the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Joseph C. Wilson wrote a series of op-eds questioning the war's factual basis (See "Bibliography" in "The Politics of Truth"). In one of these op-eds published in "The New York Times" on July 6, 2003, Wilson argues that, in the State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush misrepresented intelligence leading up to the invasion and thus misleadingly suggested that the Iraqi government sought uranium to manufacture nuclear weapons.


title: Plame affair

text: However, an article by journalist Susan Schmidt in "The Washington Post" on July 10, 2004, stated that the Iraq Intelligence Commission and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at various times concluded that Wilson's claims were incorrect. She reported that the Senate report stated that Wilson's report actually bolstered, rather than debunked, intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq. This conclusion has retained considerable currency despite a subsequent correction provided by the Post on the article's website: "Correction: In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase." Wilson took strong exception to these conclusions in his 2004 memoir "The Politics of Truth". The State Department also remained highly skeptical about the Niger claim.


title: Plame affair

text: Former CIA Director George Tenet said "[while President Bush] had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound", because "[f]rom what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correcti.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa," nevertheless "[t]hese 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." With regard to Wilson's findings, Tenet stated: "Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials."


title: Plame affair

text: Eight days after Wilson's July 6 op-ed, columnist Robert Novak wrote about Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger and subsequent findings and described Wilson's wife as an "agency operative".


title: Plame affair

text: In his column of July 14, 2003, entitled "Mission to Niger", Novak states that the choice to use Wilson "was made routinely at a low level without [CIA] Director George Tenet's knowledge." Novak goes on to identify Plame as Wilson's wife:


title: Plame affair

text: 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 that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.


title: Plame affair

text: Novak has said repeatedly that he was not told, and that he did not know, that Plame wasor had ever beena NOC, an agent with Non-Official Cover. He has emphatically said that had he understood that she was any sort of secret agent, he would never have named her.


title: Plame affair

text: On July 16, 2003, an article published by David Corn in "The Nation" carried this lead: "Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national securityand break the lawin order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?"


title: Plame affair

text: In that article, Corn notes: "Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, 'Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.'" Wilson has said:


title: Plame affair

text: On September 16, 2003, the CIA sent a letter to the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), requesting a criminal investigation of the matter. On September 29, 2003, the Department of Justice advised the CIA that it had requested an FBI investigation into the matter.


title: Plame affair

text: On September 30, 2003, President Bush said that if there had been "a leak" from his administration about Plame, "I want to know who it is ... and if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of." Initially, the White House denied that Karl Rove, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, were involved in the leak.


title: Plame affair

text: Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from involvement with the investigation because of his close involvement with the White House, and the responsibility for oversight fell to James B. Comey, a former prosecutor who had just been appointed deputy attorney general three weeks previously. Comey then appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the matter as Special Counsel who convened a grand jury. The CIA leak grand jury investigation did not result in the indictment or conviction of anyone for any crime in connection with the leak itself. However, Libby was indicted on one count of obstruction of justice, one count of perjury, and three counts of making false statements to the grand jury and federal investigators on October 28, 2005. Libby resigned hours after the indictment.


title: Plame affair

text: The federal trial "United States v. Libby" began on January 16, 2007. On March 6, 2007, Libby was convicted on four counts, and was acquitted of one count of making false statements. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, a fine of US$250,000, and two years of supervised release after his prison term.


title: Plame affair

text: After the verdict, Special Counsel Fitzgerald stated that he did not expect anyone else to be charged in the case: "We're all going back to our day jobs." On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted Libby's jail sentence, effectively erasing the 30 months he was supposed to spend in jail. Libby was pardoned by Donald Trump on Friday, April 13, 2018.


title: Plame affair

text: In March 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the investigation had cost $2.58 million. The GAO also reported that "this matter is now concluded for all practical purposes."


title: Plame affair

text: According to testimony given in the CIA leak grand jury investigation and "United States v. Libby", Bush administration officials Richard Armitage, Karl Rove, and Lewis Libby discussed the employment of a then-classified, covert CIA officer, Valerie E. Wilson (also known as Valerie Plame), with members of the press.


title: Plame affair

text: The Wilsons also brought a civil lawsuit against Libby, Dick Cheney, Rove, and Armitage, in "Wilson v. Cheney". On July 19, 2007, "Wilson v. Cheney" was dismissed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia. On behalf of the Wilsons, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an appeal of the U.S. District Court's decision the following day.


title: Plame affair

text: The merits of plaintiffs' claims pose important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials. Defendants' motions, however, raise issues that the Court is obliged to address before it can consider the merits of plaintiffs' claims. As it turns out, the Court will not reach, and therefore expresses no views on, the merits of the constitutional and other tort claims asserted by plaintiffs based on defendants' alleged disclosures because the motions to dismiss will be granted ... The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory. But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush Administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials. Thus, the alleged tortious conduct, namely the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's status as a covert operative, was incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform.


title: Plame affair

text: Judge Bates ruled that the "plaintiffs have not exhausted their administrative remedies under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which is the proper, and exclusive, avenue for relief on such a claim." Bates ruled that the FTCA outlines the appropriate remedy since the FTCA "accords federal employees absolute immunity from common-law tort claims arising out of acts they undertake in the course of their official duties," and the "plaintiffs have not pled sufficient facts that would rebut the [FTCA] certification filed in this action."


title: Plame affair

text: The Wilsons appealed that decision the next day. On August 12, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling in a 2–1 decision.


title: Plame affair

text: The Wilsons asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling. On May 20, 2009, the Justice Department, in a brief filed by Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, and Justice Department attorneys Mark B. Stern and Charles W. Scarborough, took the position that, "The decision of the court of appeals is correct and does not conflict with any decision of this Court or any other court of appeals, ... Further review is unwarranted." Melanie Sloan, an attorney for the Wilsons and the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, released a statement that read, "We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson ... The government's position cannot be reconciled with President Obama's oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions."


title: Plame affair

text: On June 22, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court announced, without comment, it would not hear an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling. According to a statement issued by CREW, the Supreme Court decision brings "the case to a close." In the statement, Melanie Sloan responded to the ruling:


title: Plame affair

text: The Wilsons and their counsel are disappointed by the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case, but more significantly, this is a setback for our democracy. This decision means that government officials can abuse their power for political purposes without fear of repercussion. Private citizens like the Wilsons, who see their careers destroyed and their lives placed in jeopardy by administration officials seeking to score political points and silence opposition, have no recourse.


title: Plame affair

text: The Wilsons, and CIA memoranda presented in the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, indicate that Ambassador Wilson's diplomatic experience in Africa, and particularly in Niger, led to his selection for the mission to Niger. He is fluent in French, and, during his diplomatic career prior to the trip, he had served as a U.S. State Department general services officer in Niger, as an ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe, as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in both Brazzaville and Iraq (taking over as Chief of Mission during the 1990–91 Gulf War), in other diplomatic postings, and in subsequent national security and military advisory roles concerning U.S.-African affairs under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.


title: Plame affair

text: After being consulted by her superiors at the CIA about whom to send on the mission, Valerie Plame, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested that they ask Ambassador Wilson, her husband, whom she had married in 1998, whether or not he might be interested in making such a trip.


title: Plame affair

text: In the book "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War" by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, as Corn observes (before its release on September 8, 2006), they consider the issue of "whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there", presenting "new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been."


title: Plame affair

text: In his testimony to the grand jury, Libby testified that both he and Vice President Cheney believed that Joseph Wilson was qualified for the mission, though they wondered if he would have been selected had his wife not worked at the CIA.


title: Plame affair

text: Subsequent press accounts reported that "White House officials wanted to know how much of a role she had in selecting him for the assignment."


title: Plame affair

text: In his book, Tenet writes "Mid-level officials in [the CIA's Counterproliferation Division (CPD)] decided on their own initiative to [ask Joe Wilson to look into the Niger issue because] he'd helped them on a project once before, and he'd be easy to contact because his wife worked in CPD."


title: Plame affair

text: In March 2007, Plame addressed the question while testifying before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority. ... It's been borne out in the testimony during the Libby trial, and I can tell you that it just doesn't square with the facts." She described that in February 2002, while discussing an inquiry from the office of Vice President Cheney about the alleged Iraqi uranium purchases, a colleague who knew of her husband's diplomatic background and previous work with the CIA suggested sending him, and that she agreed to facilitate the discussion between her husband and her superiors despite her own ambivalence about the idea.


title: Plame affair

text: In response to Plame's testimony, Republican Senators Kit Bond, Orrin Hatch, Richard Burr submitted additional views to the Senate report that stated "Mrs. Wilson told the CIA Inspector General that she suggested her husband for the trip, she told our committee staff that she could not remember whether she did or her boss did, and told the House Committee, emphatically, that she did not suggest him." Also in the additional views is the full text of an e-mail message sent by Plame on February 12, 2002, to the Directorate of Operations at CPD, in which she writes that Joe Wilson "may be in a position to assist" the CIA's inquiries into the Niger reports.


title: Plame affair

text: In a review of Plame's memoir, "Fair Game", Alan Cooperman wrote for "The Washington Post" that "by her own account, Valerie Wilson neither came up with the idea [of sending Joe Wilson to Niger] nor approved it. But she did participate in the process and flogged her husband's credentials." Plame writes in her book that Joe Wilson was "too upset to listen" to her explanations after learning years later about the February 12, 2002 email she had sent up the chain of command outlining his credentials.


title: Plame affair

text: In September 2003, on CNN's "Crossfire", Novak asserted: "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. There is no great crime here," adding that while he learned from two administration officials that Plame was a CIA employee, "[The CIA] asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators."


title: Plame affair

text: In "The CIA Leak", published on October 1, 2003, Novak describes how he had obtained the information for his July 14, 2003, column "Mission to Niger":


title: Plame affair

text: I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one. During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue. At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.


title: Plame affair

text: In that column, Novak also claims to have learned Mrs. Wilson's maiden name "Valerie Plame" from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who In America", though it was her CIA status rather than her maiden name which was a secret. Novak wrote in his column "It was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA," though that assertion is contradicted by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Valerie Wilson, and the CIA.


title: Plame affair

text: According to Murray S. Waas in "The American Prospect" of February 12, 2004, the CIA source warned Novak several times against the publication: two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name; according to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words ... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think."


title: Plame affair

text: Novak's critics argue that after decades as a Washington reporter, Novak was well aware of Plame's CIA status due to the wording he used in his column. A search of the "LexisNexis" database for the terms "CIA operative" and "agency operative" showed Novak had accurately used the terms to describe "covert" CIA employees, every time they appear in his articles.


title: Plame affair

text: On March 17, 2007, Plame testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She was asked how she learned of Novak's reference to her in his column. Plame told the committee


title: Plame affair

text: I found out very early in the morning when my husband came in and dropped the newspaper on the bed and said, 'He did it'. ... We had indications in the week prior that Mr. Novak knew my identity and my true employer. And I of course alerted my superiors at the agency, and I was told, don't worry; we'll take care of it. And it was much to our surprise that we read about this July 14. ... I believe, and this is what I've read, that the then-spokesman, Mr. Harlow, spoke directly with Mr. Novak and said something along the lines of, don't go with this; don't do this. I don't know exactly what he said, but he clearly communicated the message that Mr. Novak should not publish my name.


title: Plame affair

text: Novak has written, "the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else."


title: Plame affair

text: According to "The Washington Post", Harlow conveyed in an interview, "he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed." Novak published a column refuting Harlow's claim. In his book, George Tenet wrote


title: Plame affair

text: Bill [Harlow] struggled to convince Novak that he had been misinformed [about Wilson's wife being responsible for sending her husband to Niger]-and that it would be unwise to report Mrs. Wilson's name. He couldn't tell Novak that Valerie Wilson was undercover. Saying so over an open phone line itself would have been a security breach. Bill danced around the subject and asked Novak not to include her in the story. Several years and many court dates later, we know that the message apparently didn't get through, but Novak never told Bill that he was going to ignore his advice to leave Valerie's name out of his article.


title: Plame affair

text: In a December 2008 interview with the "National Ledger", Novak was asked about his role in the Plame affair. Novak replied:


title: Plame affair

text: If you read my book, you find a certain ambivalence there. Journalistically, I thought it was an important story because it explained why the CIA would send Joe Wilsona former Clinton White House aide with no track record in intelligence and no experience in Nigeron a fact-finding mission to Africa. From a personal point of view, I said in the book I probably should have ignored what I'd been told about Mrs. Wilson. Now I'm much less ambivalent. I'd go full speed ahead because of the hateful and beastly way in which my left-wing critics in the press and Congress tried to make a political affair out of it and tried to ruin me. My response now is this: The hell with you. They didn't ruin me. I have my faith, my family, and a good life. A lot of people love meor like me. So they failed. I would do the same thing over again because I don't think I hurt Valerie Plame whatsoever.


title: Plame affair

text: On July 11, 2006, Robert Novak posted a column titled "My Role in the Valerie Plame Leak Story": "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed my attorneys that, after two and one-half years, his investigation of the CIA leak case concerning matters directly relating to me has been concluded. That frees me to reveal my role in the federal inquiry that, at the request of Fitzgerald, I have kept secret." Novak dispels rumors that he asserted his Fifth Amendment right and made a plea bargain, stating: "I have cooperated in the investigation." He continues:


title: Plame affair

text: For nearly the entire time of his investigation, Fitzgerald knewindependent of methe identity of the sources I used in my column of July 14, 2003. That Fitzgerald did not indict any of these sources may indicate his conclusion that none of them violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. ... In my sworn testimony, I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson's wife's role in instituting her husband's mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part. Following my interview with the "primary source", I sought out the second administration official and the CIA spokesman for confirmation. I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in "Who's Who in America. (Italics added.)


title: Plame affair

text: Michael Isikoff revealed portions of his new book titled "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War", co-authored with David Corn, in the August 28, 2006, issue of "Newsweek". Isikoff reports that then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage had a central role in the Plame affair.


title: Plame affair

text: In their book "Hubris", Isikoff and Corn revealas both Armitage and syndicated columnist Robert Novak acknowledged publicly laterthat Armitage was Novak's "initial" and "primary source" for Novak's July 2003 column that revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative and that after Novak revealed his "primary source" (Novak's phrase) was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger", Armitage phoned Colin Powell that morning and was "in deep distress". Reportedly, Armitage told Powell: "I'm sure [Novak is] talking about me." In his "Newsweek" article, Isikoff states:


title: Plame affair

text: The next day, a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA ... [William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser] felt obligated to inform White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. But Powell and his aides feared the White House would then leak that Armitage had been Novak's sourcepossibly to embarrass State Department officials who had been unenthusiastic about Bush's Iraq policy. So Taft told Gonzales the bare minimum: that the State Department had passed some information about the case to Justice. He didn't mention Armitage. Taft asked if Gonzales wanted to know the details. The president's lawyer, playing the case by the book, said no, and Taft told him nothing more. Armitage's role thus remained that rarest of Washington phenomena: a hot secret that never leaked.


title: Plame affair

text: According to Isikoff, as based on his sources, Armitage told Bob Woodward Plame's identity three weeks before talking to Novak, and Armitage himself was aggressively investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, but was never charged because Fitzgerald found no evidence that Armitage knew of Plame's covert CIA status when he talked to Novak and Woodward.


title: Plame affair

text: In an August 27, 2006, appearance on "Meet the Press", Novak was asked if indeed Armitage was his source of Mrs. Wilson's identity as a CIA operative. Novak responded: "I told Mr. Isikoff ... that I do not identify my sources on any subject if they're on a confidential basis until they identify themselves ... I'm going to say one thing, though, I haven't said before. And that is that I believe that the time has way passed for my source to identify himself."


title: Plame affair

text: On August 30, 2006, "The New York Times" reported that the lawyer and other associates of Armitage confirmed he was Novak's "initial and primary source" for Plame's identity. "The New York Times" also reported


title: Plame affair

text: Mr. Armitage cooperated voluntarily in the case, never hired a lawyer and testified several times to the grand jury, according to people who are familiar with his role and actions in the case. He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife's computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said. But Mr. Armitage kept his actions secret, not even telling President Bush because the prosecutor asked him not to divulge it, the people said ... Mr. Armitage had prepared a resignation letter, his associates said. But he stayed on the job because State Department officials advised that his sudden departure could lead to the disclosure of his role in the leak, the people aware of his actions said. ... He resigned in November 2004, but remained a subject of the inquiry until [February 2006] when the prosecutor advised him in a letter that he would not be charged.


title: Plame affair

text: In an interview with CBS News first broadcast on September 7, 2006, Armitage admitted that he was Novak's "initial" and "primary source" (Novak's words). In the interview, he described his conversation with Novak: "At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, "Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?" I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency, adding it was "just an offhand question. ... I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had." After acknowledging that he was indeed Robert Novak's initial and primary source for the column outing Plame, Richard Armitage referred to what has been termed "a classified State Department memorandum" which purportedly refers to Valerie Wilson.


title: Plame affair

text: While the document is "classified", Armitage stated, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified. ... I had never seen a covert agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government. ... I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative. ... I didn't try to out anybody." In a phone interview with "The Washington Post", Armitage reiterated his claim, stating that in 40 years of reading classified materials "I have never seen in a memo ... a covert agent's name."


title: Plame affair

text: According to "The Washington Post", Armitage attributed his not being charged in the investigation to his candor in speaking with investigators about his action; he says that he turned over his computers and never hired an attorney: "'I did not need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth.'"


title: Plame affair

text: Novak disputed Armitage's claim that the disclosure was "inadvertent". In a column titled "The real story behind the Armitage story", Novak stated:


title: Plame affair

text: First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column ... he noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson's role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak columnimplying to me it continued reporting Washington inside information.


title: Plame affair

text: Novak also disputes Armitage's claim that he learned he was Novak's "primary source" (Novak's phrase) only after reading Novak's October 1 column: "I believed [Washington lobbyist Kenneth Duberstein, Armitage's close friend and political adviser] contacted me October 1 because of news the weekend of September 27–28 that the Justice Department was investigating the leak."


title: Plame affair

text: Armitage also acknowledged that he was Woodward's source. At the end of a lengthy interview conducted in the first week of September 2006, he describes his June 2003 conversation with Woodward as an afterthought: "He said, 'Hey, what's the deal with Wilson?' and I said, 'I think his wife works out there.'"


title: Plame affair

text: In his memoir, titled "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting In Washington", Novak wrote that after Armitage revealed to him that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, "Armitage smiled and said: 'That's real Evans and Novak, isn't it?' I believe he meant that was the kind of inside information that my late partner, Rowland Evans, and I had featured in our column for so long. I interpreted that as meaning Armitage expected to see the item published in my column."


title: Plame affair

text: On November 11, 2007, Armitage appeared on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" and was asked to respond to Valerie Wilson's assertion that Armitage "did a very foolish thing" in revealing her identity to Novak. Armitage and Blitzer had the following exchange:


title: Plame affair

text: ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson", not "Mrs. Plame", worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.


title: Plame affair

text: ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.


title: Plame affair

text: BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.


title: Plame affair

text: ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covert agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.


title: Plame affair

text: In his grand jury testimony, Rove testified he learned of Plame's CIA affiliation from journalists and not from government officials. Rove testified that Novak called him in July 2003 to discuss a story unrelated to Plame or Wilson. Eventually, according to Rove, Novak told him he planned to report in an upcoming column that Plame worked for the CIA. Rove told the grand jury that by the time Novak had called him, he had already learned of Plame from other reporters, but that he could not recall which reporters had told him. When Novak inquired about Wilson's wife working for the CIA, Rove indicated he had heard something like that, according to the source's recounting of the grand jury testimony for the Associated Press. Rove told the grand jury that three days later, he had a phone conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper and, in an effort to discredit some of Wilson's allegations, informally told Cooper that he believed Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, though he never used her name. Rove also testified to the grand jury that he had heard from Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. Rove testified that Libby told him that he heard the information from journalists.


title: Plame affair

text: The indictment of Libby states: "On or about July 10 or July 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke to a senior official in the White House ("Official A") who advised LIBBY of a conversation Official A had earlier that week with columnist Robert Novak in which Wilson's wife was discussed as a CIA employee involved in Wilson's trip. LIBBY was advised by Official A that Novak would be writing a story about Wilson's wife." Though never confirmed by Fitzgerald, it has been reported that Rove was "Official A."


title: Plame affair

text: Shortly after the publication of Novak's article, Rove also reportedly called Chris Matthews and told him off the record that "Wilson's wife is fair game."


title: Plame affair

text: On July 2, 2005, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove spoke to "Time" reporter Matt Cooper "three or four days" before Plame's identity was first revealed in print by commentator Robert Novak. Cooper's article in "Time", citing unnamed and anonymous "government officials", confirmed Plame to be a "CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Cooper's article appeared three days after Novak's column was published. Rove's lawyer asserted that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin also has said that his client did not initiate conversations with reporters about Plame and did not encourage reporters to write about her.


title: Plame affair

text: Initially, Rove failed to tell the grand jury about his conversations with Cooper. According to Rove, he only remembered he had spoken to Cooper after discovering a July 11, 2003, White House e-mail that Rove had written to then-deputy National Security advisor Stephen J. Hadley in which Rove said he had spoken to Cooper about the Niger controversy. Luskin also testified before the grand jury. He told prosecutors that "Time" reporter Viveca Novak had told him prior to Rove's first grand jury appearance that she had heard from colleagues at "Time" that Rove was one of the sources for Cooper's story about Plame. Luskin in turn said that he told Rove about this, though Rove still did not disclose to the grand jury that he had ever spoken to Cooper about Plame. Viveca Novak testified she couldn't recall when she spoke to Luskin. Rove testified a total of five times before the federal grand jury investigating the leak. After Rove's last appearance, Luskin released a statement that read in part: "In connection with this appearance, the special counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target of the investigation. Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges."


title: Plame affair

text: On July 11, 2006, Novak confirmed that Rove was his second source for his article that revealed the identity of Plame as a CIA agent, the source who confirmed what Armitage had told him.


title: Plame affair

text: On February 12, 2007, Novak testified in Libby's trial. As Michael J. Sniffen of the Associated Press reports: "Novak testified he got confirmation from White House political adviser Karl Rove, who replied to him: 'Oh, you've heard that, too.' "


title: Plame affair

text: Court documents reveal that in December 2004, Fitzgerald was considering pursuing perjury charges against Rove.


title: Plame affair

text: On July 8, 2007, Rove spoke publicly about the investigation at the Aspen Ideas Festival question-and-answer session. Rove told the audience "My contribution to this was to say to a reporter, which is a lesson about talking to reporters, the words 'I heard that too,' ... Remember, the underlying offense of Armitage talking to Novak was no violation. There was no indictment."


title: Plame affair

text: On August 19, 2007, Rove was asked by David Gregory on "Meet the Press" about whether Rove considered Plame to be "fair game". Rove replied "No. And you know what? Fair game, that wasn't my phrase. That's a phrase of a journalist. In fact, a colleague of yours." Rove has not denied he had a conversation with Matthews. "Newsweek" reported in October 2003 that a source familiar with Rove's side of the conversation told "Newsweek" that Rove told Matthews it was "reasonable to discuss who sent [Joe] Wilson to Niger."


title: Plame affair

text: After announcing his resignation from the Bush Administration, Rove appeared on Fox News Sunday and "Meet the Press", and discussed his role in the Plame affair. According to Rove, he didn't believe he was a confirming source for Robert Novak and Matt Cooper with regard to Plame. Rove also reiterated that he first learned of Plame from another reporter, though would not disclose which reporter. Rove told Gregory "I acted in an appropriate manner, made all the appropriate individuals aware of my contact. I met with the FBI right at the beginning of this, told them everything. You're right, the special prosecutor declined to take any action at all. I was never a target." Rove told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" "I didn't know her name, didn't know her status at the CIA."