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White House Investigated Over CIA Leak

Posted on: Tuesday, 30 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

The FBI began a full-scale criminal investigation Tuesday into whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer, and President Bush ordered his staff to cooperate with the first major probe of his administration.

Democrats demanded the appointment of a special outside counsel, but President Bush said, "I'm absolutely confident that the Justice Department can do a good job."

"I don't know of anyone in my administration who has leaked," Bush said. "This investigation is a good thing."

The Justice Department alerted the White House late Monday of the decision to move from a preliminary inquiry into a full investigation, a step rarely taken with complaints involving leaks of classified information.

The investigation is aimed at finding who leaked the name of the CIA operative, possibly in an attempt to punish the officer's husband, who had accused the administration of manipulating intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.

Most White House employees discovered the probe was under way when they turned on their computers and found an e-mail shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday that said: PLEASE READ: Important Message From Counsel's Office.

"You must preserve all materials that might in any way be related to the department's investigation," counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered. Officials indicated that would include telephone logs, e-mails, notes and other documents.

"We welcome this investigation," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than the president of the United States."

Still, the investigation was an embarrassing development for a president who promised to bring integrity and leadership to the White House after years of Republican criticism of the Clinton administration.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats pressed their case for a special counsel, saying Attorney General John Ashcroft had an obvious conflict of interest.

"We don't have confidence in John Ashcroft ... and we know without a doubt that somebody broke the federal law," Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle said. Ashcroft has not ruled out appointing a special counsel, leaving the possibility open, a senior law enforcement official said.

That decision will depend on a number of factors, such as whether a suspect is identified who presents a potential conflict for the Justice Department. For now, the investigation is being done by FBI agents in the counterintelligence division, based at the FBI Washington field office, and overseen by 11 career prosecutors in the counterespionage section of the Justice Department's criminal division.

Federal law prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of a covert agent's name. The CIA officer's name was published by columnist Robert Novak, who said he based his report on two senior administration officials.

Ashcroft, at a news conference, said the CIA also had been instructed to tell employees to preserve relevant information.

"Such requests are standard procedures in investigations of this type," Ashcroft said. He declined to say why he hadn't sought an outside investigation. "Because of an ongoing investigation of criminal violations, I will not be making any further comment at this time," Ashcroft said.

News executives expressed concern that the investigation could lead to subpoenas of reporters' notes and phone records - and the journalists themselves. "The question really comes down to whether there are other ways to do this that do less damage to the idea of the First Amendment, said Bill Felber, editor of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, who handles freedom of information issues for the Associated Press Managing Editors. "This ought to be last resort, not a first resort."

Bush spent the day away from the White House, traveling to Chicago and Cincinnati to raise money for his re-election campaign.

He said in Chicago that he had instructed his staff to cooperate with the investigation, and he also called for anyone outside the administration who had information about the matter to bring it forward.

"Leaks of classified information are bad things, and we've had too many lately in Washington," Bush said. "We've had leaks from the executive branch and leaks from the legislative branch. I want to know who the leakers are."

A day earlier, McClellan said it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Karl Rove, Bush's chief political strategist, had played any role in disclosing the name of the CIA officer, who is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a prominent critic of Bush's Iraq policy.

It was Wilson who traveled to Niger in 2002 to investigate allegations of uranium sales to Iraq. He concluded the allegations were not credible. On July 6, 2003, he wrote a commentary in The New York Times that said some intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Wilson said Monday, referring to the leaking of his wife's name, that people in whom he has confidence have "indicated to me that he (Rove), at a minimum, condoned it and certainly did nothing to put a stop to it for a week after it was out there."

The focus on Rove brought an odd twist to Bush's travels. When the president boarded Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington, he walked up the steps and waved - and not a single camera followed. He looked momentarily perplexed. All lenses were trained on Rove at the bottom of the steps.

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