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Bush Raises Threshold for Firing Aides in Leak Probe
By Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen
The Washington Post
Tuesday 19 July 2005
President Bush said yesterday that he will fire anyone in the administration
found to have committed a crime in the leaking of a CIA operative's name, creating
a higher threshold than he did one year ago for holding aides accountable in
the unmasking of Valerie Plame.
After originally saying anyone involved in leaking the name of the covert CIA
operative would be fired, Bush told reporters: "If somebody committed a
crime, they will no longer work in my administration."
This is a small, but potentially very significant, distinction, because details
that have emerged from the leak investigation over the past week show that Karl
Rove, Bush's top political aide, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice
President Cheney's chief of staff, discussed Plame with reporters before her
name was revealed to the public. It is unclear whether either man committed
a crime, according to lawyers familiar with the case.
Democrats pounced on Bush's comments to accuse him of trying to shield White
House aides from future punishment.
"This is about the credibility of the president of the United States,"
said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "He said he would fire
anyone who was involved in leaking this sensitive information. Now, he's changing
his tune."
Reid and other Democrats said that even if administration aides did not violate
the law, they should lose their security clearances -- if not their jobs --
for trafficking in information about a CIA operative.
But Bush, speaking to reporters during a news conference with Indian Prine
Minister Manmohan Singh, said, "It's best that people wait until the investigation
is complete before you jump to conclusions."
Prosecutors are nearing the end of an inquiry into whether Rove, Libby or any
other administration official broke the law. This is a difficult crime to prove
because it must be shown that the person who leaked her name knew not only that
Plame had covert status but also that the government was trying to conceal it.
Rove has admitted discussing Plame with two reporters but told the grand jury
he was not aware at that time that she was covert, a lawyer familiar with his
testimony said. Less is known about Libby's role, although he has cleared several
reporters to discuss with prosecutors his conversations with them.
Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter who testified before a grand jury
last week about conversations with Rove and Libby about Plame, said that when
he asked Libby if he knew Plame worked at the CIA, Libby said he heard that
she did. Libby's attorney could not be reached to comment.
It is still not clear who was the original source of information about Plame,
though prosecutors have asked several witnesses about a State Department memo
that circulated inside the administration before Plame was unmasked by columnist
Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003. The memo said Plame worked for the CIA and
played a role in her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, being sent to Niger in 2002
to investigate allegations it was selling nuclear materials to Iraq, according
to people familiar with the document.
Wilson reported back that the allegations appeared unfounded. When he went
public in 2003 with these conclusions, they challenged Bush's argument for going
to war and set in motion a White House effort to discredit him. Federal prosecutors
are trying to determine if the anti-Wilson campaign crossed the line by exposing
Plame's identity.
Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, was one of several people who
prosecutors believe may have seen the memo. A source close to the case, confirming
a report yesterday by Bloomberg News, said that a White House phone log turned
over to prosecutors showed that Novak telephoned Fleischer on July 7, 2003,
a day after Wilson alleged that Bush hyped intelligence about Iraq. Fleischer
has told prosecutors he did not return the columnist's call, the source said.
Aides did not dispute that Bush appeared to raise the bar yesterday for what
it would take for him to fire people involved the leak.
In June 2004, Bush was asked if he would "fire anyone found to" have
leaked the agent's name. "Yes," he replied. Some Republican officials
pointed to other quotations to dispute that Bush had changed his view, notably
on Oct. 6, 2003, when he said: "This is a serious charge, by the way. We're
talking about a criminal action."
Victoria Toensing, a lawyer and longtime Republican who helped write the Intelligence
Identities Protection Act of 1982, which is at the center of this case, said
Bush is now saying what he probably meant to say when the leak investigation
was launched. "Of course you are going to be concerned if a law was broken,"
she said. "But what is it that somebody did wrong if they didn't break
the law?"
A former Justice Department official who talks frequently to people involved
in the case said signs point to special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald focusing
on the aftermath of the leak rather than the disclosure.
"I think he made his decisions months ago that there wasn't a crime when
the leak occurred," said the former official, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity. "Now, he's looking at a coverup: perjury, obstruction of
justice, false statements to an FBI agent."
A few discrepancies have emerged in public statements about the case, offering
clues to potential contradictions being examined by the grand jury. Cooper wrote
in his Time account of his grand jury appearance that "a surprising line
of questioning had to do with, of all things, welfare reform." But Cooper
wrote that he "can't find any record of talking about it with him on July
11, and I don't recall doing so." Rove has maintained that the conversation
was initially about welfare reform, according to a lawyer familiar with his
side of the story.
In the court of public opinion, the Bush administration is slipping. Only one
in four people surveyed -- 25 percent -- said the White House is fully cooperating
with the leak investigation, down from 47 percent in September, according to
a new poll by ABC News.
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Staff writer Carol Leonnig and polling director Richard Morin contributed to
this report.
Go to Original
Where the Game of Politics Ends
The Oregonian | Editorial
Tuesday 19 July 2005
President Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove,
is implicated in a real security breach and should be forced from his job.
Karl Rove may sleep a little better now that President Bush says that lawbreaking
in the Valerie Plame leak -- not just the leak itself -- will be the standard
for firing anyone in the White House who disclosed Plame's role as a CIA agent.
We're not sure anyone else should.
Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief
of staff, leaked the Plame-CIA information, says Time magazine's Matthew Cooper.
But, as pretty much everyone now knows, they would have had to leak it to Osama
bin Laden, sign an al-Qaida pledge card and accept a personal check in order
to actually break the law in question.
Maybe the safest bet is that Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter who
was jailed for refusing to disclose her sources on this topic, will be the only
person to see the inside of a jail cell because of it. And she didn't even write
a story.
But even if what Rove and Libby did is not a crime, it is an exceptionally
bad and cynical habit in George W. Bush's inner circle, and now would be a good
time to break it.
If you'll recall, Plame the CIA agent also is the wife of former ambassador
Joseph C. Wilson IV, whom the CIA sent to Niger in 2002 to find out whether
Saddam Hussein was buying enriched uranium to use for weapons of mass destruction.
Wilson didn't find much and said so in his report to the CIA. It was a report
that the White House obviously ignored when it built its case to go to war in
Iraq.
But when Wilson wrote an essay for a New York Times opinion page in 2003, the
White House took notice. Wilson accused the White House of orchestrating a campaign
to discredit him.
After the op-ed piece appeared, it was disclosed that Wilson's wife worked
for the CIA in an undercover job and that her connections led to Wilson getting
the Niger assignment.
For his part, Rove said through an attorney that he didn't specifically disclose
Plame's name. This is the thinnest of reeds, though, if Cooper's account is
correct and Rove identified Wilson's wife as a CIA agent.
We don't know whether all of this was White House retaliation, a warning to
others that disagreeing with the president has career implications or simply
a matter of good ol' Karl helping out a couple of folks in the press room. But
it's pretty clear that, from Ann Richards to Joe Wilson to John Kerry, hardball
is too soft a term for the kind of politics the president's people like to play.
And it's pretty clear that, whatever you call the game, Rove is the team captain.
Frank Rich, a liberal columnist for The New York Times, suggested in a piece
reprinted on our Commentary page today that Rove is out anyway. It is just a
matter of time before the politics run their course and the president's close
political adviser departs.
That would be a fine outcome and a proper one considering the level of White
House cynicism here. But it would be better if the president did the right thing
and fired Rove now. Similarly, Cheney should fire Libby.
After all, there is a point where the game of politics ends and real life begins.
We'd suggest that the point probably comes well before a real-life reporter
gets thrown in jail and a real-life secret agent's identity gets revealed by
the minions of her commander in chief.
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