The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium. Between 2003 and 2007, Patrick Fitzgerald led a criminal investigation into allegations that the Bush administration had leaked Plame's identity as retribution against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, who had publicly questioned the rationale for the Iraq War. In August 2006, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed that he had been Novak's primary source for the leak. By July 2007, when President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence Scooter Libby had received for perjury and obstruction of justice during Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak, the scandal had largely come to a close. In April 2018, President Donald Trump fully pardoned Libby. 1980s Between 1980 and 1982 Sadam Hussein's Baathist Iraq procures more than 400 tons of yellowcake from Portugal and Niger. This material remains in Iraq under IAEA monitoring until the 2003 invasion. 1981 Seyni Kountché, then President of Niger, stated that his country would "sell uranium even to the devil." 1988 A BBC report notes that South Africa illicitly sells Uranium to Iraq through Uday Hussein. This sale is unverified by other sources. 1990s 1990 Valerie Plame begins her first CIA posting, posing as a State Department official at the US embassy in Athens. 1991 The Persian Gulf War ends with Iraq being forced to concede to the demands of the United Nations after a coalition led by the United States forces directed by GHW Bush's Pentagon where Colin Powell heads army via Gen Norman Schwartzkopf expels Iraqi Baathist armies of Saddam Hussein from burning oil fields of Kuwait. 1993 According to an editorial in National Review Online, an IAEA report lists 580 tons of natural uranium in Iraqi stockpiles, some of which came from Niger. 1994 May 22, 1994: Brewster Jennings & Associates, a front company for the Central Intelligence Agency posing as a "legal services office," is registered with Dun and Bradstreet. Brewster Jennings & Associates will be a cover for many CIA officers, including Valerie Plame. 1997 Fearing that Aldrich Ames has revealed her identity to Russian intelligence, the CIA recalls Plame from Europe to Washington. 1999 June: (According to a 2002 conversation