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The U.S. grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name has interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell on July 16, but he is not a subject of the inquiry, the State Department said Sunday. Powell is the latest official from the Bush administration to be called before the grand jury in Washington. The grand jury investigation is to determine who leaked the name of Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime. Novak revealed Plame's work for the CIA a week after her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, criticized Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger, a major uranium-exporting nation in Africa. The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in mid-1992 to check the allegation, and he concluded it was unfounded. The administration has acknowledged that its inclusion in the State of the Union address was a mistake. [more]