EDITORIAL: … As Valerie Plame, CIA Leak Case Unfolds

By The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Apr. 7–On July 18, President Bush said he would fire any member of his administration who was found to have broken the law against revealing information about a covert CIA operative. But the implication from court papers filed by prosecutors in the Valerie Plame leak case, first disclosed yesterday by The New York Sun, is this: The President was involved in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of Ms. Plame was given to a reporter.

According to the court papers, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former aide, I. Lewis Libby, told prosecutors the President authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq. Before Mr. Libby’s indictment, he testified to the grand jury investigating the leak that Mr. Cheney told him to pass on information, and the President authorized the disclosure.

The authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Mr. Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. There was no indication in the new court papers — documents filed Wednesday — that either President Bush or Mr. Cheney authorized Mr. Libby to disclose Ms. Plame’s CIA identity. However, the documents reveal that the nation’s two top leaders put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence as they were increasingly criticized about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

A 1982 law bans the outing of a covert intelligence agent. Ms. Plame’s husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, has believed the “outing” was in retaliation for his July 2003 op-ed in The New York Times, saying, “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programs was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” Mr. Wilson had disputed reports that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons.

A federal grand jury indicted Mr. Libby in October, and he now is asking for huge amounts of classified information from the government in order to defend himself against five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI about the Plame leak. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said he believes Mr. Libby’s requests for information go too far. But no matter the result of this dispute, the trial of Mr. Libby scheduled next year no doubt will include details of the Bush administration’s manipulation of pre-war intelligence.

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