Lawyer: Bush Left Leak Details to Cheney
Staff and agencies
08 April, 2006
By JENNIFER LOVEN, 28 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney ‘s former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.
It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document that detailed the intelligence community‘s conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The new information about Bush and Cheney‘s roles came as the president‘s aides have scrambled to defuse the political fallout from a court filing Wednesday by the prosecutors in the complex, ongoing investigation into whether the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was disclosed to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an Iraq war critic.
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in the filing that Libby testified before a grand jury that he was authorized by Bush, through Cheney, to leak information from the intelligence estimate.
Fitzgerald did not say in the filing that Cheney authorized Libby to leak Plame‘s identity, and Bush is not accused of doing anything illegal.
But by suggesting that the leak of Plame‘s name may have been set in motion by the president, however indirectly, the documents reverberated much more broadly. Democrats unleashed a storm of criticism against Bush, saying he appeared to have misused the declassification process for political gain.
Because Bush declassified the intelligence document, the White House does not view Libby‘s conversations about it as a leak. But that determination is difficult to make without knowing precisely when Bush decided to declassify the information. |
