posted on April 6, 2006 12:51:42 PM new
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.
Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.
But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Bush's political foes jumped on the revelation about Libby's testimony.
``The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of Americas security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe,'' Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said.
posted on April 6, 2006 01:13:20 PM new
Bush went on record saying "he had no idea who leaked the information and would fire anyone in the White House who did leak."
A year later Bush went on record saying "he would fire anyone who committed a crime while leaking information."
What will Bush tell the American People now?
I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE DUMBO'S NEXT POLL RATINGS AFTER THIS. HOW LOW CAN DUMBO GO??? WHAT'S YOUR GUESS?
posted on April 6, 2006 03:02:08 PM new
The benefits of a liberal media. Cant have it both ways. Libby indited for perjury now the media say she was telling the truth?
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on April 6, 2006 03:06:05 PM new
Oh now Bear - If that's the best you have to offer, it probably would have been best to just say nothing.
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 6, 2006 06:55:50 PM new
Bear - come on - are you still going with the.... I know there there are seven White House staffers and his own notes that say differently, but Libby told the gods honest truth. It's those seven White House staffers that are lying, defense.
BTW - you are the only one trying to use this lame ass excuse. Maybe you should get up to date on the party line before you reply next time.
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 6, 2006 08:36:40 PM new
Fenix, maybe you should bone up on the subject. Pres Bush by telling Libby (if he did) to leak the info, automatically declassified that info.
All this is is another attempt by the MSM & liberals to make something of nothing.
And yet the fed prosecutor refuses to release to the defense all its info (as required by law) against Libby. What is the prosecutor hiding that it doesnt want seen?
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on April 6, 2006 08:55:23 PM new
In Court Filings, Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER
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 key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony.
The testimony, cited in a court filing by the government late Wednesday, provides 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 at a moment that the White House was trying to defend itself against charges that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
If Mr. Libby's account is accurate, it also involves Mr. Bush directly in the swirl of events surrounding the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer.
The president has the legal power to declassify information, and Mr. Libby indicated in his testimony that the president's decision — which he said was conveyed through Mr. Cheney — gave him legal cover to pass on information contained in a National Intelligence Estimate.
A little more than a week later, under continuing pressure, the White House published a declassified version of the executive summary of the estimate, in an effort to make the case that Mr. Bush was justified in arguing, in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa.
But the political impact of the disclosure could be significant. It suggests that Mr. Libby, who has been charged with perjury and obstruction in the C.I.A. leak case, may argue as part of his defense that any information he leaked was on the instructions of his two superiors, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush. However, the sections of the N.I.E. that Mr. Libby said he was freed to discuss make no mention of Valerie Plame, the C.I.A. officer who was exposed in the course of the arguments over the intelligence, prompting the leak investigation.
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 NIE."
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 and the husband of Ms. Plame. Mr. Wilson 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" Iraq had sought to 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 he was to tell 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."
Ms. Miller never published anything about the contents of the intelligence estimate.
Mr. Libby testified that he first told Mr. Cheney that he could not conduct 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," the court filing said.
Mr. Libby testified that at the meeting, he did not discuss Mr. Wilson's wife, 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 obtaining uranium.
posted on April 6, 2006 09:05:05 PM new
Bear - I know that's the rational - why do you think I told you to check up on the party line.
BTW - wasn't that - the President has the power to do whatever he wants justifications one that was last offered up by Nixon?
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 6, 2006 09:39:33 PM new
Bear - just out of curiosity... when there are no democrats around... no you ever ask yourself why, if all of this was done legitimately and on the up and up, someone from the administration did not go to prosecutors early on in the game and let them know that?
the administration has been raked over the coals for a couple months on and off over this. Why subjet themselves to the political damage if there was nothing to hide?
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 6, 2006 09:47:08 PM new
So if Bush declassified and authorized the leak why didn't he just go to the American people and tell them he had done so? Seems to me like he was trying to hide something. And exactly how did this benefit the American people?
posted on April 6, 2006 10:11:50 PM new
bear said "All this is is another attempt by the MSM & liberals to make something of nothing.
Yep sure is. But then when we remember that the ONLY way they think they're going to win any seats in Nov is on an anti-Bush platform....one can understand why they continue TRYING to make something out of nothing....it's ALL they've got.
oh...except of course their recently stated National Security plan.....LOL LOL LOL which is even funnier.
posted on April 7, 2006 12:11:16 AM new
Well Linda - since you are home and have to be off your feet for the next few weeks (hope everything went well by the way) maybe you will have the time to come up with a reasonable response to why the White House put themselves thru so much negative press is they believed that what was done was indeed completely legal and above board.
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 7, 2006 05:36:02 AM new
WASHINGTON (April 7) - President Bush's approval ratings hit a series of new lows in an AP-Ipsos poll that also shows Republicans surrendering their advantage on national security - grim election-year news for a party struggling to stay in power.
"These numbers are scary. We've lost every advantage we've ever had," GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio said. "The good news is Democrats don't have much of a plan. The bad news is they may not need one."
THE G.O.P. LIED TO AND BURNED THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS. NOW THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICANS WILL BURN THEM.
AFTER AWHILE ALL LIARS LIKE BUSH AND HIS GANG OF G.O.P. CROOKS GET CAUGHT UP WITH AND PAY THE PRICE.
posted on April 7, 2006 08:11:58 AM new
It is time for Bush to resign. He made it very clear in 2003 what his policy is if someone leaked information, he would fire them. It is time for Bush to step to the plate and fire himself.
His actions of treason against Americans and those who continue to support his actions are absolutely despicable and should be held accountable. There is no room in this country for traitors and they should be punished by the full extent of the law. I think you know exactly what that means.
posted on April 7, 2006 08:34:21 AM new So if Bush declassified and authorized the leak why didn't he just go to the American people and tell them he had done so?
Simple answer. With all the liberals & MSM spouting the same ole mantra, "Bush Lied", to any announcement made from the White House, he allowed the info to be released in a manner the liberals & MSM would accept as they normally do.
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on April 7, 2006 08:54:04 AM new
Thanks Linda and Bear again you both gave me a good laugh. Your efforts are pathetic but comical at the same time.
posted on April 7, 2006 08:59:44 AM new "If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. "If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.
We can now look forward to Bush firing himself since it has been revealed that he was the source of the leak.
posted on April 7, 2006 10:54:30 AM new
Helen, do YOU understand the difference between a authorized leak (IE disimination of information) and a UNAUTHORIZED leak?
Didnt think so.
Suck on this sheepa.....
When a leak ISNT a leak.
AND INFO WAS ALREADY PUBLIC
IT'S amazing how the common topics and subjects of discussion three years ago should vanish so quickly from memory.
Yesterday, breathless news reports suggested that President Bush had directed the "leak" of classified information in July 2003. Yet the "leak" in question was from a document called the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE - and by the time this "leak" occurred, the contents of the NIE as they related to Iraq were almost entirely public.
On Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before Bush's supposed "leak," the administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the urging of Senate Democrats. And in early 2003, reporters hostile to the administration (primarily John Judis and Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic) were being told all sorts of things about the still-classified portions of the NIE.
And this "leak" wasn't a leak in any case. A "leak" is the unauthorized release of government information. The leak of classified information is a crime. But according to Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to the vice president who gave the information from the NIE to a reporter, he only released it because he was authorized to do so by the president himself.
Constitutionally, the authority to declare documents "classified" resides with the president. So, under the terms of an executive order first drafted in 1982, he can declassify a document merely by declaring it unclassified.
The language of the executive order reads as follows: "Information shall be declassified or downgraded by the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position . . . [or] a supervisory official." In the executive branch, the president is the ultimate "supervisory official."
We have found out about the president's decision to declassify information from the 2002 NIE because the special prosecutor who has charged Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice revealed elements of Libby's grand-jury testimony in new court papers.
The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, claims Libby was involved in revealing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame as a means of discrediting Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson.
Wilson had written an op-ed in which he said he knew first-hand that the Bush administration had deliberately lied when it claimed Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa. (The CIA had sent Wilson, a one-time ambassador, to the African country of Niger for little more than a week in 2002 to check out the uranium story.)
Wilson was certain he could demonstrate that Libby had told Judith Miller of The New York Times about Valerie Plame's CIA employment at a meeting between the two on July 8, 2003. But Libby told the grand jury, in effect, that he met with Miller that day to give her information to discredit Wilson's op-ed that was far more potent than simply pointing out Wilson probably got the gig because his CIA wife was throwing the diplomatic has-been a bone.
According to Fitzgerald's court filing, Libby "testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to 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. [Libby] 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. [Libby] testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized [Libby] to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."
Also lost in the mists of recent memory is the reason we're talking about this in the first place. Fitzgerald is involved in this story because he was asked to investigate whether the public exposure of Mrs. Wilson's CIA employment was a crime. For it to be a crime, she had to be a covert CIA operative who had served in that capacity at some point in the five years prior to her exposure - and the person exposing her had to be doing it consciously and with knowledge that she was covert.
Fitzgerald did not indict Libby or anybody else on those grounds. Even so, there's been a lot of harrumphing about the idea that the White House might have sought to discredit Wilson at all - that somehow doing such a thing was manifestly horrible.
But Wilson had claimed that he had inside knowledge that the White House knew Saddam had never sought to purchase uranium and that it went ahead and told a cock-and-bull story anyway - that, in other words, Bush had deliberately lied us into war.
That charge was so explosive that the Bush administration had no choice but to answer it in some fashion. By authorizing the release of some classified material to a reporter, Bush was fighting back against a slander.
And slander it was, no more and no less. The Senate Intelligence Committee specifically said Wilson came back from Niger and offered up some information suggesting Saddam had been pursuing nuclear material in Niger in 1999.
Wilson's appalling lies were revealed in 2004. And yet, here we are, in 2006, fighting the same old battles. Guess this is what happens when you don't win a war quickly enough.
posted on April 7, 2006 11:06:40 AM new
Thanks fenix....I won't be home bound though....can go as long as I can deal with the pain level.
------
To answer your question, imo, it's because 99.9% of the time the dems are looking for a 'got ya' ....and just about as often it blows up in their faces....as this 'so called story' has. There was no story to begin with....but the dems/liberals keep trying to find something, anything to use against this administration.
Imo, they're looking more and more like the fools they are ...when they could be establishing a strong platform to present to the voters for 2006. But...hey it's their choice and it appears they'd rather spread these 'got ya stories' that don't pan out rather than actually do anything constructive.
posted on April 7, 2006 11:13:51 AM new
fenix asked bear:
"BTW - wasn't that - the President has the power to do whatever he wants justifications one that was last offered up by Nixon?"
Only IF you don't want to mention that both carter AND clinton did the same thing too.
All Presidents fight to retain the 'special powers' they believe our Constitution has given THEM....and is separate from those given to our Congress to butt in on those powers. They want them to be kept separate and not under the 'decision making process' of any Congress. All have fought/argued for them.
posted on April 7, 2006 11:37:03 AM new
Bear said "Suck on this sheepa".LOL
Like I said Bear's efforts are both pathetic and comical at the same time.
Remember this Bear? When Bush and Cheney were interviewed by Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in 2004 about the C.I.A. name leak both Bush and Cheney were not under oath.
posted on April 7, 2006 11:43:19 AM new
Linda - the only people who are buying that arguement are the ones that would excuse Bush if he shot puppies on live TV. People that actually look at events and try to find the logic behind them rather than buying a party line ain't buying that story.
Are you telling me that the president decided not to come clean and allow an independent prosecutor to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars on an investigation into something that was no longer an issue, allow his approval ratings and his political power to drop to record lows and take the dollar value and stocks down because he was secretly waiting for this to blow up in democrats face?
You know what Linda - I think you are better off going with the, he knew he was walking the line and decided to take a chance story. It's a little less scummy.
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Never ask what sort if computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him? - Tom Clancy
posted on April 7, 2006 12:31:30 PM new
No fenix....I'll say it again. It's the liberal MSM that has been throwing this crap at this administration in the HOPE that something, anything will stick.
So far it hasn't just as in THIS case.
Has nothing to do with this President 'allowing' anything. But rather it's the action of all the anti-Bushites still trying.
Voters will notice nothing has stuck. And it won't affect who they chose to vote for in Nov.....nor in 2008. They don't have that good of memories. lol
posted on April 7, 2006 12:32:33 PM new
Until it become a issue of political weight and significance there would be no need to acknowledge. Now that it is apparent, there must be damage control. Get the issue out way before November to avoid disenfranchising those few left in the party on-board with Bush. Knowing the attention span of the American public it will be old news come November.
