Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operative's Name
By Staff and Wire Reports
Jun 3, 2004, 05:28
Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew
about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA
operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her
husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.
Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside
lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his
involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name
to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
The move suggests the president anticipates being questioned by
prosecutors. Sources say grand jury witnesses have implicated the
President and his top advisor, Karl Rove.
White House spokesmen, however, dismiss the hiring of outside counsel
as a routine precaution.
"The president has made it very clear he wants everyone to cooperate
fully with the investigation and that would include himself," White
House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday night.
He confirmed that Bush had contacted Washington attorney Jim
Sharp. "In the event the president needs his advice, I expect he
probably would retain him," McClellan said. There is no indication
Bush has been questioned yet.
A federal grand jury has questioned numerous White House and
administration officials to learn who leaked the name of CIA
operative Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news
media. Wilson has charged that officials made the disclosure in an
effort to discredit him.
Bush has been an outspoken critics of leaks, saying they can be very
damaging, but he has expressed doubts that the government's
investigation will pinpoint who was responsible. While Bush has said
he welcomed the leak investigation, it has been an awkward
development for a president who promised to bring integrity and
leadership to the White House after years of Republican criticism and
investigations of the Clinton administration.
Even though he has a White House counsel, Bush is dependent on
outside lawyers for private matters. A memo distributed to the staff
last year reminded officials that the counsel's office works solely
for the president in his official capacity and is not a private
attorney for anyone.
Democrats seized on the news to criticize the president.
"It speaks for itself that the president initially claimed he wanted
to get to the bottom of this, but now he's suddenly retained a
lawyer," said Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the Democratic National
Committee. "Bush shouldn't drag the country through grand juries and
legal maneuvering. President Bush should come forward with what he
knows and come clean with the American people."
Plame was first identified by syndicated columnist and TV commentator
Novak in a column last July. Novak said his information came from
administration sources.
Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked because of his
criticism of Bush administration claims that Iraq had tried to obtain
uranium from Niger , which Wilson investigated for the CIA and found
to be untrue.
Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal
crime. The grand jury has heard from witnesses and combed through
thousands of pages of documents turned over by the White House, but
returned no indictments.
The probe is being handled by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick
Fitzgerald, appointed after Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped
aside from case because of his political ties to the White House.
Wilson has suggested in a book that the leaker was Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. But Wilson 's
book, "The Politics of Truth," gave no conclusive evidence for the
claim.
The White House denied the claim and accused Wilson of seeking to
bolster the campaign of Democrat John Kerry , for whom he has acted as
a foreign policy adviser.
Wilson also said it's possible the leak came from Elliott Abrams, a
figure in the Reagan administration Iran-Contra affair and now a
member of Bush's National Security Council. And Rove, Bush's chief
political adviser, may have circulated information about Wilson and
Plame "in administration and neoconservative circles" even if Rove
was not himself the leaker, Wilson wrote.
Another possibility is that two lower-level officials in Cheney's
office - John Hannah or David Wurmser - leaked Plame's identity at
the behest of higher-ups "to keep their fingerprints off the crime,"
Wilson speculated.
Sources within the investigation say evidence points to Rove
approving release of the leak. They add that their investigation
suggests the President knew about Rove's actions but took no action
to stop release of Plame's name.
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