This is an article from the New York Times on I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby's
testimony. I tend to look at the NY Times as a relatively credible
source, and the way this reads, there's enough room to shift blame that
it'd be tough to prove who authorized anything that happened even if
Libby is telling the truth.
As someone who often feels like the "lone liberal voice" in Wyoming, I'd
hoped for something clearer.
Kendall
In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER
New York Times
Published: April 6, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 - President Bush authorized Vice President Dick
Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis
Libby Jr., to leak to a reporter key portions of a classified prewar
intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury
testimony disclosed in court papers filed late Wednesday.
The court filing provided the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has
long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security
threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence
report on Iraq and was also involved in the swirl of events leading up
to the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.
The grand jury testimony by Mr. Libby, who has been charged with perjury
and obstruction in the C.I.A. leak case, is said by prosecutors to
indicate that Mr. Cheney obtained explicit approval from Mr. Bush to
permit Mr. Libby to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate
regarding Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
The disclosure prompted Democrats to demand that the White House be
forthcoming about Mr. Bush's role. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
Democratic leader, released a statement saying: "In light of today's
shocking revelation, President Bush must fully disclose his
participation in the selective leaking of classified information. The
American people must know the truth."
The court filing, which was first reported this morning on the New York
Sun Web site, said that Mr. Libby testified that the "Vice President
advised defendant that the President had authorized defendant to
disclose certain information in the N.I.E." The prosecutors said that
Mr. Libby testified that he recalled the circumstances "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."
The leak was intended, the court papers suggested, as a rebuttal to the
Op-Ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, by Joseph C.
Wilson IV, a former ambassador, who wrote that he had traveled to Africa
in 2002 after Mr. Cheney had raised questions about possible nuclear
purchases. Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful"
that Iraq had sought to purchase nuclear fuel from Niger.
At Mr. Cheney's office, the Op-Ed article was viewed "as a direct attack
on credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of
signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," according to the
court papers.
The presidential authorization was provided, the court papers said, in
advance of a meeting on July 8, 2003 between Mr. Libby and Judith
Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times. Mr. Libby brought a
brief abstract of the N.I.E.'s key judgments to the meeting with Ms.
Miller in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel about two blocks from the
White House.
Mr. Libby testified, the prosecutors said, that he was "specifically
authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of
the classified N.I.E. to Miller on that occasion because it was thought
that the N.I.E. 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 N.I.E. to come out."
The court filing said that Mr. Libby said "he understood that that was
to tell Ms. Miller, among other things, that "a key judgment of the
N.I.E. held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Mr.
Libby, the prosecutors, said, testified that the meeting with Ms. Miller
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."
Mr. Libby testified that he first told Mr. Cheney that he could not have
such a conversation with Ms. Miller because the intelligence estimate on
Iraq was classified. Mr. Libby testified that Mr. Cheney later told him
that Mr. Bush had authorized the release of "relevant portions."
In addition, Mr. Libby told the grand jury that he also spoke with David
Addington, then a lawyer for Mr. Cheney whom Mr. Libby regarded as an
expert on national security law. "Mr. Addington opined that Presidential
authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to
declassification of the document."
Mr. Libby testified that at the meeting he did not discuss Mr. Wilson's
wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, the C.I.A. officer at the center of the leak
inquiry, because "he had forgotten by that time that he learned about
Ms. Wilson's C.I.A. employment a month earlier from the Vice President."
Ms. Miller in her Oct. 16, 2005, account of the meeting said that her
notes showed that the two had discussed Mr. Wilson's wife, who,
according to her notes, worked in a unit of the C.I.A. that is engaged
in the intelligence assessments of unconventional weapons.
Ms. Miller said that Mr. Libby discussed a chronology of what she said
he described as "credible evidence" of Iraq's efforts to acquire
uranium. She made no reference to whether Mr. Libby referred to any
material as derived from the intelligence estimate, but said that he
alluded to two reports, one in 1999 and another in 2002, that seemed to
support the contention that Iraq was interested in obtain uranium.
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Collis [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 2:04 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: article...
I was willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt...but if this is
true, it raises danger signals...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12187153/
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