not that this is a surprise
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/washington/06cnd-leak.html?hp&ex=1144382400&en=cc5a0128b83c317e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
E-MailPrint Save By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 6, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 6 â 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.
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Timeline: The Leak Case (Oct. 29, 2005)
Related
Text: Government Filing (U.S. v. Libby) 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 â 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.
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>Err..I'm hearing talk that Libby said under oath that Bush approved the leak?
>Anyone have any info on that?
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