Washington Post legend Bob Woodward knew who Valerie Plame was in  June 2003, likely before any other reporter, but he didn't tell his executive editor about it until a few weeks ago.

Here's the Watergate hero's statement.

An excerpt from the WaPo story:

Bob Woodward apologized today to The Washington Post's executive editor for failing to tell him for more than two years that a senior Bush administration official had told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame, even as an investigation of those leaks mushroomed into a national scandal.

Woodward, an assistant managing editor and best-selling author, said he told Leonard Downie Jr. that he held back the information because he was worried about being subpoenaed by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case.
 
"I apologized because I should have told him about this much sooner," Woodward said in an interview. "I explained in detail that I was trying to protect my sources. That's Job No. 1 in a case like this. . . .

"I hunkered down. I'm in the habit of keeping secrets. I didn't want anything out there that was going to get me subpoenaed."

Downie, who was informed by Woodward late last month, said in a separate interview that his most famous employee had "made a mistake." Despite Woodward's concerns about his confidential sources, Downie said, "he still should have come forward, which he now admits. We should have had that conversation . . . I'm concerned that people will get a misimpression about Bob's value to the newspaper and our readers because of this one instance in which he should have told us sooner."

The Post disclosed this morning that Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case. Woodward said today he had gotten permission from one of his sources, White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr., to disclose that he had testified that their June 20, 2003 conversation did not involve Plame, the wife of administration critic Joseph C. Wilson IV. He said he had "pushed" his other administration source, without success, to allow him to discuss that person's identity, but that the source has insisted that the waiver applies only to Woodward's testimony.

The abrupt revelation that Woodward has been sitting on information about the Plame controversy has reignited questions about his unique relationship with The Post while writing books with unparalleled access to high-level officials, and about why Woodward minimized the importance of the Fitzgerald probe in television and radio interviews while hiding his own involvement in the matter.

The disclosure has already prompted critics to compare Woodward to Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter who left the paper last week--after serving 85 days in jail in the Plame case--amid questions about her lone-ranger style and why she had not told her editors sooner about her involvement in the matter. Miller discussed Plame with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and has now been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Woodward said he testified that Libby did not discuss Plame with him.

Both Woodward and Downie said they are not sure that The Post could have done anything with Woodward's 2003 conversations because they were conducted on an off-the-record basis. Woodward said the unnamed official told him about Plame "in an offhand, casual manner . . . almost gossip" and that "I didn't attach any great significance to it."