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McClellan Fingers Bush, Cheney, Rove in Plame Leak
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Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair [
Bush at Center of Intelligence Leak [
Former Aide Blames Bush for Leak Deceit
By Matt Apuzzo
The Associated Press
Wednesday 21 November 2007
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative.
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."
Bush's chief of staff at the time was Andrew Card.
The excerpt, posted on the Web site of publisher PublicAffairs, renews questions about what went on in the West Wing and how much Bush and Cheney knew about the leak. For years, it was McClellan's job to field - and often duck - those types of questions.
Now that he's spurring them, answers are equally hard to come by.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn't clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt. "The president has not and would not ask his spokespeople to pass on false information," she said.
McClellan turned down interview requests Tuesday.
Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the leak was retribution for his public criticism of the Iraq war. The accusation dogged the administration and made Plame a cause celebre among many Democrats.
McClellan's book, "What Happened," isn't due out until April, and the excerpt released Monday was merely a teaser. It doesn't get into detail about how Bush and Cheney were involved or reveal what happened behind the scenes.
Yet the teaser provided enough fodder for administration critics.
"Just when you think the credibility of this White House can't get any lower, another shoe drops," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "If the Bush administration won't even tell the truth to its official spokesman, how can the American people expect to be told the truth either?"
In the fall of 2003, after authorities began investigating the leak, McClellan told reporters that he'd personally spoken to Rove, who was Bush's top political adviser, and Libby, who was Cheney's chief of staff.
"They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved," McClellan said at the time.
Both men, however, were involved. Rove was one of the original sources for the newspaper column that identified Plame. Libby also spoke to reporters about the CIA officer and was convicted of lying about those discussions. He is the only person to be charged in the case.
Since that news conference, however, the official White House stance has shifted and it has been difficult to get a clear picture of what happened behind closed doors around the time of the leak.
McClellan's flat denials gave way to a steady drumbeat of "no comment." And Bush's original pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak became a promise to fire anyone who "committed a crime."
In a CNN interview earlier this year, McClellan made no suggestion that Bush knew either Libby or Rove was involved in the leak. McClellan said his statements to reporters were what he and the president "believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given."
Bush most recently addressed the issue in July after commuting Libby's 30-month prison term. He acknowledged that some in the White House were involved in the leak. Then, after repeatedly declining to discuss the ongoing investigation, he said the case was closed and it was time to move on.
Associated Press writer Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.
Cheney's Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair
By Jason Leopold and Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by attorneys prosecuting former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.
Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy's stinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.
But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson. The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador raises the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercover role with the CIA?
Further, the highly explicit nature of Cheney's comments not only hints at a rift between Cheney and Bush over what Cheney felt was the scapegoating of Libby, but also raises serious questions about potentially criminal actions by Bush. If Bush did indeed play an active role in encouraging Libby to take the fall to protect Karl Rove, as Libby's lawyers articulated in their opening statements, then that could be viewed as criminal involvement by Bush.
Last week, Libby's attorney Theodore Wells made a stunning pronouncement during opening statements of Libby's trial. He claimed that the White House had made Libby a scapegoat for the leak to protect Karl Rove - Bush's political adviser and "right-hand man."
"Mr. Libby, you will learn, went to the vice president of the United States and met with the vice president in private. Mr. Libby said to the vice president, 'I think the White House ... is trying to set me up. People in the White House want me to be a scapegoat,'" said Wells.
Cheney's notes seem to help bolster Wells's defense strategy. Libby's defense team first discussed the notes - written by Cheney in September 2003 for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan - during opening statements last week. Wells said Cheney had written "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others": a reference to Libby being asked to deal with the media and vociferously rebut Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration knowingly "twisted" intelligence to win support for the war in Iraq.
However, when Cheney wrote the notes, he had originally written "this Pres." instead of "that was."
During cross-examination Tuesday morning, David Addington was asked specific questions about Cheney's notes and the reference to President Bush. Addington, former counsel to the vice president, was named Cheney's chief of staff - a position Libby had held before resigning.
"Can you make out what's crossed out, Mr. Addington?" Wells asked, according to a copy of the transcript of Tuesday's court proceedings.
"It says 'the guy' and then it says, 'this Pres.' and then that is scratched through," Addington said.
"OK," Wells said. "Let's start again. 'Not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy ...' and then what's scratched through?" Wells asked Addington again, attempting to establish that Cheney had originally written that President Bush personally asked Libby to beat back Wilson's criticisms.
"T-h-i-s space P-r-e-s," Addington said, spelling out the words. "And then it's got a scratch-through."
"So it looks like 'this Pres.?'" Wells asked again.
"Yes sir," Addington said.
Thus, Cheney's notes would have read "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The words "this Pres." were crossed out and replaced with "that was," but are still clearly legible in the document.
The reference to "the meat grinder" was understood to be the Washington press corps, Wells said. The "protect one staffer" reference, Wells said, was White House Political Adviser Karl Rove, whose own role in the leak and the attacks on Wilson are well documented.
Furthermore, Cheney, in his directive to McClellan that day in September 2003, wrote that the White House spokesman needed to immediately "call out to key press saying the same thing about Scooter as Karl."
McClellan had publicly stated in September 2003 that Rove was not culpable in the leak of Valerie Plame's covert CIA identity, nor was he involved in a campaign to discredit her husband, but McClellan did not say anything to the media that exonerated Libby, which led Cheney to write the note. A couple of weeks later, in October 2003, McClellan told members of the media that it was "ridiculous" for them to suggest Libby and Rove were involved in the leak, because he received personal assurances from both men that they had nothing to do with it.
Moreover, Wells insinuated Tuesday that Cheney's note [seemingly] implicating President Bush in the discrediting of Wilson was one of the 250 pages of emails and documents the White House failed to turn over to investigators who had been probing the leak for more than two years.
Wells insinuated that Cheney's note, because it contained a reference to "this Pres." may have been an explosive piece of evidence that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who at the time of the leak was White House counsel, withheld from investigators, citing executive privilege. Addington told Wells that when subpoenas were first issued by the Justice Department in the fall of 2003, demanding documents and emails relating to Wilson and Plame be preserved, he was given Cheney's notes and immediately recognized the importance of what the vice president had written. Addington said he immediately entered into a "discussion" with Gonzales and Terry O'Donnell, Cheney's counsel, about the note, but Addington did not say whether it was turned over to investigators in the early days of the probe.
Wells's line of questioning is an attempt to shift the blame for the leak squarely onto the shoulders of the White House - a tactic aimed at confusing the jury - and will likely unravel because it has nothing to do with the perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges at the heart of the case against Libby. Still, Tuesday's testimony implicating President Bush may be the most important revelation that has emerged from the trial thus far.
Addington revealed during his testimony Monday that in June 2003 there were internal discussions - involving President Bush and Vice President Cheney - about declassifying for specific reporters a portion of the highly classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate as a way to counter Wilson's criticisms against the administration. That portion purportedly showed that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger to use for building an atomic bomb - a claim that Wilson had debunked when he personally traveled to Niger to investigate it a year earlier.
In late June or early July 2003, "a question was asked of me - by Scooter Libby: Does the president have authority to declassify information?" Addington told jurors Monday, in response to a question by defense attorney William Jeffress. "And the answer I gave was, 'Of course, yes. It's clear the president has the authority to determine what constitutes a national security secret and who can have access to it.'"
President Bush signed an executive order in 2003 authorizing Cheney to declassify certain intelligence documents. The order was signed on March 23, four days after the start of the Iraq War and two weeks after Wilson first appeared on the administration's radar.
Truthout will publish a follow-up to this story, with opinions from legal experts on possible implications of these latest developments for the White House.
Bush at Center of Intelligence Leak
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Thursday 06 April 2006
Attorneys and current and former White House officials close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson said Thursday that President Bush gave Vice President Dick Cheney the authorization in mid-June 2003 to disclose a portion of the highly sensitive National Intelligence Estimate to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward and former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
These current and former White House officials are among the 36 witnesses who have testified before a grand jury and have been cooperating with the special counsel's probe since its inception.
The officials, some of whom are attorneys close to the case, added that more than two dozen emails that the vice president's office said it recently discovered and handed over to leak investigators in February show that President Bush was kept up to date about the circumstances surrounding the effort to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The sources indicated that the leak probe is now winding down, and that soon, new information will emerge from the special counsel's office that will prove President Bush had prior knowledge of the White House campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on the Iraqi threat in order to win public support for the war.
The new information that surfaced late Wednesday places President Bush at the center of the probe for the first time since the investigation into the leak began more than two years ago and raises new questions as to whether Bush knew in advance the lengths to which senior White House officials went to discredit Wilson.
In the court filing, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to [former New York Times reporter Judith] Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the Vice President thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."
"Defendant 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. Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE," the filing further states. "Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant 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. Defendant testified that he thought he brought a brief abstract of the NIE's key judgments to the meeting with Miller on July 8. Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium. Defendant testified that this July 8th meeting was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President's authorization that it be disclosed. Defendant testified that one of the reasons why he met with Miller at a hotel was the fact that he was sharing this information with Miller exclusively."
In October 2003, three months after Plame Wilson's CIA status and identity were unmasked in print by columnist Robert Novak, President Bush said publicly that it was unlikely that the individual who leaked her name would ever be found.
"I mean this is a town full of people who like to leak information," Bush said during a press conference on Oct. 7, 2003. "And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official. Now, this is a large administration, and there's lots of senior officials. I don't have any idea."
Details of President Bush's involvement in the effort to counter the former ambassador's claims came in a court document filed late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, which was first reported by the New York Sun newspaper.
President Bush retained a private attorney when he was interviewed in the leak probe two years ago, specifically about whether he knew about it or had authorized it.
According to four attorneys who over the past two days have read a transcript of the President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to either investigators or the special counsel that he had authorized Cheney or any other administration official to leak portions of the NIE to Woodward and Miller or any other reporter. Rather, these people said the president said he frowned upon "selective leaks."
Bush also said during the interview two years ago that he had no prior knowledge that anyone on his staff had been involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson or that individuals retaliated against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's undercover identity to reporters.
The 39-page court document Fitzgerald filed late Wednesday included previously unreported testimony given to a grand jury by Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was indicted in October on five-counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators about how he discovered Plame Wilson's identity.
Libby testified that Cheney had received explicit instruction from President Bush to declassify a portion of the October 2002 NIE that said Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore from Niger and share that information with reporters like Miller and Woodward, whose previous work proved to be sympathetic to the administration and would help to discredit Wilson, according to the court document and attorneys and current and former administration officials close to the investigation.
Libby's "participation in a critical conversation with Judith Miller on July 8 (discussed further below) occurred only after the Vice President advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE," the Fitzgerald's filing states. "Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller - getting approval from the President through the Vice President to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval - were unique in his recollection."
"Defendant further testified that on July 12, 2003, he was specifically directed by the Vice President 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 filing states. "Defendant was instructed to provide what was for him an extremely rare "on the record" statement, and to provide "background" and "deep background" statements, and to provide information contained in a document defendant understood to be the cable authored by Mr. Wilson."
On June 27, 2003, two weeks before Libby's meeting with Miller and disclosing to her portions of the NIE, Libby met with Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, and leaked the portion of the NIE that dealt with Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Niger, which was first reported by this reporter in March.
A week or so earlier, Woodward met with two other government officials, one of whom told him in a "casual" and off-handed manner that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
Woodward said the meeting with Libby and the other government officials had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book 'Plan of Attack' about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."
Woodward wrote a first-person account for the Washington Post after he gave a sworn deposition to Fitzgerald about information he had learned about Valerie Plame Wilson. It was a shocking revelation at the time. Woodward had publicly discounted the importance of the Plame Wilson leak and had referred to Fitzgerald as a "junkyard dog" prosecutor. He then revealed in November that he had been told about Plame Wilson's CIA employment in June 2003 - before any other journalist.
The Watergate-era journalist wrote that when he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, "Libby discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, mentioned "yellowcake" and said there was an effort by the Iraqis to get it from Africa. It goes back to February '02. This was the time of Wilson's trip to Niger."
The information in the NIE about Niger was still considered highly classified and extremely sensitive, and although Woodward had been the recipient of classified information on other occasions during the course of gathering material for his books, the data he was provided with concerning the NIE had been authorized by Cheney in order to rebut Wilson. Woodward never wrote a story for the Post about the intelligence information he was given.
President Bush signed an executive order in March 2003 authorizing Cheney to declassify certain intelligence documents. The executive order was signed on March 23, 2003, four days after the start of the Iraq war, and two weeks after Wilson first appeared on the administration's radar.
Jason Leopold's Articles on the CIA Leak Case:
03 April 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040306Z.shtml
21 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032106J.shtml
20 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032006J.shtml
18 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031906Z.shtml
17 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031706Z.shtml
06 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606Z.shtml
01 March 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030106J.shtml
24 February 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022406Y.shtml
20 February 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006Z.shtml
15 February 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021506J.shtml
09 February 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020906J.shtml
03 February 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020306J.shtml
23 January 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012306Z.shtml
13 January 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml
10 January 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006Z.shtml
05 January 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506I.shtml
17 December 2006 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121705X.shtml
09 December 2005 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120905I.shtml
04 December 2005 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020306J.shtml
22 November 2005 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112205Y.shtml
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