Republican Senator Says Bush, Cheney Should Explain Leak

washingtonpost.com



By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; A04

President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to explain what classified information was authorized to be leaked to reporters in July 2003 and why, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday.

"I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated," Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) said. He was referring to last week's revelation in a court document that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that Cheney told him Bush approved leaking parts of a classified document about intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Specter said on "Fox News Sunday" that he had heard yesterday morning about a report, first published by the Associated Press, that a lawyer close to the case said Bush "didn't tell the vice president specifically what to do, but just said get it out."

Bush approved providing information from the then-classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a memorandum filed in federal court Wednesday. The prosecutor cited Libby's testimony to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name.

There has been no confirmation of Bush's role, nor of what exactly Libby was authorized to disclose from the 90-page NIE. Fitzgerald's memo, which provided new information on several aspects of the CIA leak case, came as a result of a request by Libby's lawyers for a range of classified documents to defend their client against charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to the FBI.

Libby, according to the memo, told the grand jury that Cheney "specifically had authorized" him to disclose "certain information" from the classified NIE.

Libby also testified that he was "directed" by the vice president to speak to reporters about the NIE and to provide information from a "cable authored by [retired ambassador Joseph C.] Wilson." The latter apparently referred to a classified March 2002 CIA summary of Wilson's report on his trip to Niger in February 2002 to find out whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium.

Some of Libby's comments about the NIE that he made to reporter Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, were inaccurate. Libby said one "key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That was not an NIE key judgment, and the CIA officials who wrote the document disputed that statement. The "vigorously trying to procure" quote came from an unconfirmed Defense Intelligence Agency report from early 2002 that had caught Cheney's eye.

Libby also inaccurately described the CIA report on Wilson's trip, saying the former ambassador reported information about an Iraqi delegation visiting Niger in 1999 that was "understood to be a reference to a desire to obtain uranium." In fact, Wilson said he was told that a Niger official was contacted at a meeting outside the country by a businessman who said an Iraqi economic delegation wanted to meet with him. The Niger official guessed that the Iraqis might want to talk about uranium because Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in the mid-1980s. But when they met, no talk of uranium took place.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said that although Bush has the right to declassify information, it was wrong to do it for political purposes. "This was a declassification in order to mislead America, in order to mislead them about the yellowcake from Niger, the uranium material, and in order to buttress their phony argument about the war," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Bush was correct in declassifying the information because the administration believed that Wilson, in his statements in July 2003, had "gone public with half of the story." Kyl, who believes Britain had intelligence about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger that the United States could not confirm, said the administration had mishandled the matter. "I think there was a better way to do that," he said.

Wilson, appearing on ABC's "This Week," suggested that Bush and Cheney release the transcripts of the testimony they each gave to Fitzgerald "so that we all know precisely what it was that was said to the prosecutor." Under the law, witnesses can discuss the testimony they have given to a grand jury, though no one else can.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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