tell Novak her name. (In August 2006, Armitage publicly discloses that he believes he was the "inadvertent" leak of the Plame secret, while also asserting that he did not know her actual name at the time.) Novak checks Joseph C. Wilson's biography in Who's Who to identify his wife, finding her maiden name Valerie Plame. According to the reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Armitage's leak was "inadvertent, and the Intelligence Identities Act hadn't been violated." 8 July: Robert Novak has a phone conversation with Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, in which C.I.A. agent Plame is discussed, according to an unnamed source who had been told not to talk about the case. Novak is reported to have told Rove the name of the agent as "Valerie Plame" and her role in Wilson's mission to Africa. Rove is reported to have told Novak something to the effect of, "I heard that, too." or "Oh, so you already know about it." Rove reportedly told the grand jury that at this time he had already heard about Wilson's wife working for the CIA from another journalist, but is unable to remember who that was. 8 July: Lewis Libby meets with journalist Judith Miller and tells her that the Niger uranium claim had been a "key judgement" of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and that Plame worked at the CIA. Libby would later state that President Bush had instructed him to disclose information from the classified NIE. The information Libby gave Miller was false; the Niger claim was not one of the "key judgements" headlined, bolded, and bulleted in the first pages of that NIE. Later, after testifying to a Federal grand jury in October 2005, Miller writes in a retrospective account published in the New York Times that on this date (and four days later, on 12 July 2003), Libby "played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance." c. 10 July – 11 July: Novak called CIA spokesman Bill Harlow to confirm information regarding Plame and Wilson. According to Novak, Harlow denied that Plame "suggested" that Wilson be selected for the trip, and Harlow stated instead that CIA "counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him." According to Harlow, he "warned Novak in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information", that Wilson's wife