Lawyer: Bush Left Leak Details to Cheney
By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer
04/09/06 -- WASHINGTON (AP) - 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.
Bush merely instructed Cheney to ``get it out'' and left the
details to him, said the lawyer, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White
House. The vice president chose Libby and communicated the
president's wishes to his then-top aide, the lawyer said.
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.
Wilson had accused the administration of twisting prewar
intelligence to exaggerate the weapons threat in Iraq.
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.
Libby faces trial, likely in January, on charges of perjury and
obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury and
investigators about what he told reporters about Plame.
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.
Fitzgerald's aim with the filing was to counter Libby's defense
that he innocently forgot about conversations he may have had
with reporters about Plame by showing that the White House's
concern about the war criticism was so consuming it would be
difficult to forget.
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.
On Friday, the White House argued there is an important
different between disclosing sensitive information to further a
public debate and leaking classified information that
compromises national security. But the attorney said Saturday
the president's instructions were not as specific as it might
seem from both Fitzgerald's description of Libby's testimony and
news accounts of it.
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.
Libby passed the information about the document to New York
Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. It was 10 days
later, on July 18, when the same portions of the document that
Libby discussed with Miller were released publicly.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
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