Bush implicated in Iraq intelligence leak

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Apr. 5 by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the president through the vice president" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was "unique in his recollection," the court papers said. Libby also testified that an administration lawyer told him that Bush, by authorizing the disclosure of classified information, had in effect declassified the information. Legal experts disagree on whether the president has the authority to declassify information on his own. Bush and Cheney authorized the release of the information regarding the NIE in the summer of 2003, according to court documents, as part of a damage-control effort undertaken only days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson alleged in an op-ed in the New York Times that claims by Bush that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger were most likely a hoax. According to the court papers, "At some point after the publication of the July 6 [2003] Op Ed by Mr. Wilson, Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate supervisor, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA officer at the time, and Cheney, Libby and other Bush administration officials believed that Wilson's allegations could be discredited if it could be shown that Plame had suggested that her husband be sent on the CIA-sponsored mission to Niger. Two days after Wilson's op-ed, Libby met with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and not only disclosed portions of the NIE, but also Plame's CIA employment and potential role in her husband's trip. Regarding that meeting, Libby "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance... to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller" because Vice President Cheney believed it to be "very important" to do so, the court papers filed on Apr. 5 said. The New York Sun reported the court filing on its website on Apr. 6. Libby "further testified that he at first advised the vice president that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," the court papers said. Libby "testified that the vice president had advised [Libby] that the president had authorized [Libby] to disclose relevant portions of the NIE." Additionally, Libby "testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then counsel to the vice president, whom [Libby] considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document." Addington succeeded Libby as Cheney's chief of staff after Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 28, 2005 on five counts of making false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice in attempting to conceal his role in outing Plame as an undercover CIA operative. Four days after the meeting with Miller, on July 12, 2003, Libby spoke again to Miller, and also for the first time with Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper, during which Libby spoke to both journalists about Plame's CIA employment and her possible role in sending her husband to Niger. Regarding those conversations, Libby understood that the vice president specifically selected him to "speak to the press in place of Cathie Martin [then the communications person for the vice president] regarding the NIE and Wilson," the court papers said. Libby also testified, Fitzgerald asserted in the court papers, that "at the time of his conversations with Miller and Cooper, he understood that only three people–the president, the vice president and [Libby]–knew that the key judgments of the NIE had been declassified. During the very same conversations with the press that day Libby "discussed Ms. Wilson's CIA employment with both Matthew Cooper [for the first time] and Judith Miller [for the third time]," the court papers further said. Six days after Libby's conversation with Cooper and Miller regarding Plame, on July 18, 2003, the Bush administration formally declassified portions of the NIE on Iraqi weapons programs in an effort to further blunt the damage of Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration misused the faulty Niger intelligence information to make the case to go to war. It is unclear whether the information that Bush and Cheney were said to authorize Libby to disclose was the same information that was formally declassified. One former senior government official said that both the president and Cheney, in directing Libby to disclose classified information to defend the administration's case to go to war with Iraq and in formally declassifying portions of the NIE later, were misusing the classification process for political reasons. The official said that while the administration declassified portions of the NIE that would appear exculpatory to the White House, it insisted that a one-page summary of the NIE which would have suggested that the president mischaracterized other intelligence information to go to war remain classified. The official said in an interview that he believed that the attempt to conceal the contents of the one-page summary were intertwined with the efforts to declassify portions of the NIE and to leak information to the media regarding Plame: "It was part and parcel of the same effort, but people don't see it in that context yet." Some Democrats have said the leak was part of an administration pattern of "selective disclosure"–releasing information to support its arguments and rebut its critics while guarding data that could prove embarrassing or politically damaging. The White House appeared to confirm that the Bush administration had authorized the leak, describing the release of such information as beneficial for the "public interest." "There were irresponsible and unfounded accusations being made against the administration, suggesting that we had manipulated or misused that intelligence [in order to justify going to war]," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said on Apr. 7. "Because of the public debate that was going on and some of the wild accusations that were flying around… we felt it was very much in the public interest that what information could be declassified, be declassified. And that's exactly what we did." McClellan repeatedly said the release of the material was intended to inform public debate about the war.