The Leaker in Chief? Newsweek 4/17-Michael Isikoff

[kpete]

The Leaker in Chief?
Is he a CEO who stays above the fray? Or did he give the go-ahead to strike back at critics over prewar intel? A presidential mystery.

By Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas
Newsweek
April 17, 2006 issue - George W. Bush likes to be seen as a man who dwells above the pettiness of political warfare. He has said he doesn't read the newspapers and shrugs off media criticism as carping of the chattering classes. Especially since 9/11, he has said that he looks to a higher power for guidance. He once threatened to stop sharing information with Capitol Hill if lawmakers didn't put a stop to leaking. "There are too many leaks of classified information," he told reporters in September 2003, "and if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."

Bush, it appeared, was not above the old leaking game after all. The president who, as a younger man, once played the role of loyalty enforcer in his father's White House had not forgotten how to play hardball. According to a filing from the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who has been indicted for lying in the case, told a grand jury that President Bush specifically authorized him to leak from an intelligence document on WMD in Iraq. The leak, according to Libby's testimony, was intended to rebut the allegations of an administration critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was disputing administration claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger.

more at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12228726/site/newsweek/

[MADem]

1. How long before Libby gets a pardon? Or Cheney resigns and takes the heat?

...The dissenting opinions were included in the declassified NIE released to the press on July 18, 2003. But Libby said nothing about them to Miller when he was leaking to her on July 8. Cheney's role in this operation remains murky, as does the precise role played by Bush (both men were questioned by the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald—Bush at the White House, Cheney at an unknown location—but not under oath). The filing by Fitzgerald ties Cheney more directly to Libby's leak than any evidence so far. It says Libby testified that after Wilson's op-ed appeared on July 6, Cheney questioned whether Wilson's trip to Africa was legitimate, or "whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working in the agency's counterproliferation division of the directorate of operations.

Libby has been charged with lying to a grand jury and to the Feds about when and from whom he learned Plame's identity. The theory was that Libby was trying to intimidate or get back at Wilson by exposing his wife's undercover role. Libby has argued all along that he was so preoccupied with important national-security matters, he barely noticed that Wilson's wife was involved, and later forgot that he had mentioned anything about her to reporters when he was questioned by investigators in the leak probe. To defend himself, Libby may now want to call both Cheney and Bush as witnesses at his trial. That is not likely to endear him to the president—the one man who has the power not only to declassify secrets but also to pardon convicted felons.

[Cha]

2. bush is the epitome of

Pettiness. Next to "pettiness" in the dictionary is a picture of the monkeyass.