WASHINGTON - The former No. 2 State Department official said Thursday he inadvertently disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame in conversations with two reporters in 2003.

Confirming that he was the source of a leak that triggered a federal investigation, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he never intended to reveal Plame's identity. He apologized for his conversations with syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

For almost three years, an investigation led by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has tried to determine whether Bush administration officials intentionally revealed Plame's identity as covert operative as a way to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the Bush administration's march to war with
Iraq.

"I made a terrible mistake, not maliciously, but I made a terrible mistake," Armitage said in a telephone interview from his home Thursday night.

He said he did not realize Plame's job was covert.

Armitage's admission suggested that the leak did not originate at the White House as retribution for Wilson's comments about the Iraq war. Wilson, a former ambassador, discounted reports that then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger to make a nuclear weapon - claims that wound up in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Armitage said he was not a part of a conspiracy to reveal Plame's identity and did not know whether one existed.

He described his June 2003 conversation with Woodward as an afterthought at the end of a lengthy interview.

"He said, 'Hey, what's the deal with Wilson?' and I said, 'I think his wife works out there,'" Armitage recalled.

He described a more direct conversation with Novak, who was the first to report on the issue: "He said to me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador Wilson to Niger?' I said, as I remember, 'I don't know, but his wife works out there.'"

Armitage, whose admission was first reported by CBS News Thursday, said he cooperated fully with Fitzgerald's investigation. He was never a target of the investigation and did not hire a lawyer. He agreed to speak to reporters after Fitzgerald released him from a promise of confidentiality.

Armitage said he considered coming forward late last month when a flurry of news reports identified him as the leak. But he said he did not want to be accused of trying to get the story out during the summer's slow news cycle.

"I did what I did," Armitage said. "I embarrassed my president, my secretary, my department, my family and I embarrassed the Wilsons. And for that I'm very sorry."

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, is the only administration official charged in the CIA leak case. He faces trial in January on charges he lied to authorities about conversations he had with reporters about Plame.

Armitage said he assumed Plame's job was not a secret because it was included in a State Department memo.

Committee Chairman Richard Lugar said the committee will meet on Bolton again, but did not say when.

"I'm not going to make any comments on time. It's going to require a lot of consultation with members on both sides of the aisle," the Indiana Republican said.

Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a fierce opponent of Bolton, said, "I think the nomination is in deep trouble again, as it should be."

Given Democratic opposition to Bolton's nomination, all Republicans on the committee would have to back him in order to send his name to the Senate with a full endorsement.

Chafee voiced reservations on Bolton last year, but ended up sticking with committee Republicans.

He planned to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a letter seeking more information from Bolton on some issues, Chafee's spokesman said. "The senator raised questions at the hearing with Mr. Bolton and has not received satisfactory answers," spokesman Stephen Hourahan said.

Chafee is a moderate Republican in a Democratic state, and he faces primary challenge next week from a conservative opponent.

Bolton is championed by foreign-policy conservatives, but Democrats contend Bolton bullied intelligence analysts to conform to his hawkish views in his last job as top U.S. arms control negotiator.

Bolton's opponents also say his harsh criticisms of the United Nations make him unsuitable for the job.

After Senate Democrats blocked a floor vote on Bolton's nomination last year, Bush bypassed the Senate and appointed him during a congressional recess. But that appointment expires in January and the White House wants him confirmed for the rest of Bush's term which ends in January 2009.

Lugar said the Senate has adequate time to act on Bolton this year. While Congress will break in early October for the November congressional elections, a lame-duck session after the election is all but certain.

Dodd said he intended to try to block a full Senate vote on Bolton if the nomination does come out of the committee.

"I'm stunned that we're even considering this," Dodd said, noting that a number of retired U.S. diplomats and sitting ambassadors at the United Nations have voiced opposition.

Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich -- who bucked the White House last year and was key in derailing Bolton's confirmation -- reversed his position in July, which Republicans had hoped would clear the way to confirm him.

Voinovich said Bolton has "demonstrated his ability, especially in recent months, to work with others and follow the president's lead by working multilaterally."

He said he could not "imagine a worse message to send to those opposing democracy than to replace the person our president has entrusted to lead our nation at the United Nations."

Hubris, by investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and David Corn, adds more weight to a body of evidence that the White House was determined to go to war from early 2002. Planning on Anabasis, which cost $400m (£210m), started at the end of 2001 and was approved by President Bush in February 2002. CIA agents entered Iraq to recruit volunteers two months later. Talking to his spokesman, Ari Fleischer, in May 2002, President Bush made clear his intentions towards Saddam when he said: "I'm going to kick his sorry motherfucking ass all over the Mid East," according to another press aide, Adam Levine, who witnessed the conversation.

The covert CIA preparations for war have been previously reported, but this is the first time details of the plan have been made public. According to the book, the CIA flew 80 former Iraqi soldiers into the US in the summer of 2002, and trained them at an energy department nuclear test site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

They rehearsed seizing an Iraqi airbase at Nukhaib, near the Saudi border, and broadcasting a call to Iraqi units to join a revolt against Saddam. The CIA expected Saddam to strike back and violate the no-fly zone, creating a pretext for US-British military intervention. "The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out," John Maguire, a CIA agent who ran the operation told the authors, adding that if the plan worked "you'd have a premise for war: we've been invited in".

The CIA-trained fighters were flown to Jordan in January 2003 to wait for a green light which never came.

The bill allocates $63 billion in emergency money for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It is thought the figure could climb to $70 billion after negotiators from both houses of Congress finalise the legislation.

The cost of the two wars is now approaching $500 billion.

The Senate also voted to add $700 million to combat opium production in Afghanistan, where a resurgence of the Taliban has been accompanied with increased cultivation of poppies.

The development came yesterday as the Arabic language station al-Jazeera broadcast previously unseen video footage from 2001, allegedly showing Osama bin Laden meeting some of those involved in the 11 September attacks.

With the five year anniversary of the attacks on Monday, US President George W Bush has claimed the US is engaged in an ideological struggle with militant groups such as al-Qaeda.