Bush calls CIA leak case 'very serious' By Adam Entous
Mon Oct 24, 5:26 PM ET
U.S. President George W. Bush said on Monday the investigation into the outing of a covert CIA operative was "very serious," even as Republican allies started casting aspersions on the prosecutor and the possibility of perjury charges.
The mixed signals came as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald appeared close to indicting top White House officials in the nearly two-year investigation, lawyers involved in the case said.
Fitzgerald's investigation has focused largely on Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and their conversations with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame in June and July of 2003.
Plame's identity was leaked to the media after her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, challenged the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.
After a Cabinet meeting, Bush was asked whether he agreed with Republican suggestions that Fitzgerald may be overzealous and that possible perjury charges would be little more than legal technicalities.
"This is a very serious investigation," Bush said. Rove sat behind the president in the Cabinet room; across the room sat Libby.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, said Republicans were "starting to undermine the prosecutor by implying that he's only going to be able to indict on technicalities."
"But perjury is not a technicality," Sloan said.
Lawyers involved in the case say Fitzgerald... blah blah blah
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