By Murray Waas, National Journal © National Journal Group Inc. Friday, April 14, 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly
classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of
former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq
policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and
sources who have read the classified report.
There is a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed
the vice president was deeply involved in the effort to undermine her husband.
Position papers, expert contacts and other resources from Policy Council members are available below.
The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's
Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to
Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein
had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to
government records.
The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert
CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the
CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.
The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours
after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA
report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time
magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she
been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.
Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never
encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a
court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his
grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make
any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President
Cheney, or anyone else."
But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA
report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at
the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply
involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.
A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment.
On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald,
asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The
New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed
in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the
Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the
rationale for the war in Iraq."
Moreover, on July 12, 2003, the same day that Libby spoke to both Cooper and Miller,
Libby and Cheney traveled aboard Air Force Two for the dedication of a new
aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Va. During the flight either to or from Norfolk,
Cheney, Libby, and Cathie Martin, then-assistant to the vice president for
public affairs, discussed how they might rebut Wilson's charges and discredit him,
according to federal court records, and interviews with people with
first-hand knowledge of accounts that all three provided to federal investigators.
It has long been known that Cheney was among the first people in the government to
tell Libby that Plame worked for the CIA. The federal indictment of Libby -- who
has been charged with five counts of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making
false statements to federal investigators in the CIA leak case -- states: "On or
about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States
that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the
Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had
learned this information from the CIA."
Fitzgerald further asserted that just days before Libby divulged Plame's identity to
Miller and Cooper on July 12, "Vice President Cheney, [Libby's] immediate
superior, expressed concerns to [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson's trip was
legitimate or whether it was a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife." Although
contained in a public court filing, this second conversation between Cheney and Libby had gone unreported.
The new disclosure about the CIA report further raises questions about the vice
president's role in directly authorizing the leak of classified information
outside the formal declassification process. Last week it was reported that
Libby also testified to the grand jury that Cheney told him that as part of the
effort to rebut Wilson's criticism, President Bush had authorized the leaking of
portions of a then-classified National Intelligence Estimate concerning
purported attempts by Iraq to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration has asserted that presidents have the constitutional right
to declassify information. Although vice presidents haven't shared such
authority, President Bush issued an executive order in March 2003 allowing
Cheney to share such authority with him. According to Fitzgerald's April 5 filing,
Libby has also testified that in July 2003, then-Counsel to the Vice
President David Addington "opined that Presidential authorization to publicly
disclose a document amount to a declassification of the document."
Jeffrey Smith, a former general counsel for the CIA, said in an interview, however,
that while there are executive orders that apparently allow the vice president
"on his own to determine what to declassify and to whom," that authority should
"not exempt him or anyone from exercising prudence or good judgment" in doing so.
"You would want the president or the vice president to seek the views of the
CIA or any other intelligence agencies... to make sure that there is no
potential disclosing an intelligence source" or some other sensitive information.
Criticizing the decision to leak portions of the NIE, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif.,
the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said last week: "Leaking
classified information to the press when you want to get your side out or
silence your critics is not appropriate. If I had leaked the information, I'd be
in jail. Why should the president be above the law? I am stunned."
In his grand jury testimony, according to Fitzgerald's filing, Libby portrayed
himself as a reluctant subordinate in July 2003 who took orders from higher ups.
Libby "testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not
have this conversation with [Judith] Miller because of the classified nature of
the NIE," said the special counsel's filing. "[Libby] testified that the Vice
President later advised him that the President had authorized [Libby] to
disclose the relevant portions of the NIE." It was during this time that Libby
says he spoke to Addington on the matter.
Steve Aftergood, a senior research analyst with the Federation of American
Scientists, who tracks government secrecy and classification issues, said that
Libby "presents himself in this instance and others as being very scrupulous in
adhering to the rules. He is not someone carried on by the rush of events. If
you take his account before the grand jury on face value, he is cautious and
deliberative in his behavior.
"That is almost the exact opposite as to how he behaves when it comes to disclosing
Plame's identity," Aftergood said. "All of a sudden he doesn't play within the rules.
He doesn't seek authorization. If you believe his account, he almost acts capriciously.
You have to ask yourself why his behavior changes so dramatically,
if he is telling the truth that this was not authorized and that he did not talk to higher-ups."
Libby has insisted that the vice president never authorized or told him to discuss
Plame's identity. Although Libby discussed Plame with Miller and Cooper on July 12, 2003
-- the same day he says he was authorized by Cheney to leak portions of the NIE
and the CIA report -- Libby insists the two actions are unrelated.
The new disclosure also raises the question whether President Bush or his aides knew
that Cheney may have been deciding on his own to authorize the leaking of
classified information. Senior government officials said that top Bush aides --
including then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White
House Communications Director Dan Bartlett -- were not aware that Cheney had
authorized the disclosure of the CIA report on Wilson's Niger mission. These
officials raised the possibility that Bush himself was unaware at the time of Cheney's action.
Regarding the release of Plame's name and CIA employment, a senior administration
official said that even if Cheney did not directly authorize Libby to leak the
information to the press, the vice president might have set a climate in which
his aides viewed it as routine to release classified information
whenever it served their purposes.
The administration was interested in discrediting Wilson because the former
ambassador asserted in his op-ed piece that he found no evidence in Niger to
substantiate Bush administration claims that Saddam had attempted to purchase
uranium from that country. Wilson alleged that the administration had
misrepresented intelligence by making that claim in its case to go to war with Iraq.
Six days after the Times published Wilson's piece, Libby leaked Plame's identity
to Miller and Cooper.
Cheney and other Bush administration officials also believed that the CIA debriefing
report might undermine Wilson's claims because it showed that Wilson's Niger
probe was inconclusive on the uranium questions. Wilson was restricted on the
persons he was able to interview in Niger, and he was denied some intelligence
information before undertaking the trip.
In reportedly directing Libby to disclose portions of the March 2002 CIA report on
Wilson's mission, Cheney apparently kept in the dark a number of administration
officials who were working to declassify that very same document.
According to Fitzgerald's recent filing, Libby "testified that on July 12, 2003, he
was specifically directed by the Vice President to speak to the press in the
place of Cathie Martin (then the communications person for the Vice President)
regarding the NIE and Wilson. [Libby] was instructed... to [also] provide
information contained in a document [he] understood to be the cable authored by
Mr. Wilson. During the conversations that followed on July 12 [Libby] discussed
Ms. Wilson's [CIA] employment with both Matthew Cooper (for the first time) and
Judith Miller (for the third time)."
The purported Wilson cable refers to the classified CIA debriefing of Wilson,
according to sources who have read the document. Wilson never himself authored a
cable on his Niger mission. Rather, the CIA Directorate of Operations, which
sent Wilson to Niger in February 2002, produced a March 8, 2002 report based on
Wilson's debriefing by intelligence officers. The report did not name Wilson, or
even describe him as a former ambassador, but rather as a "contact with
excellent access who does not have an established reporting record" to protect
the-then covert nature of the trip.
The report was then "widely distributed in routine channels," according to a 2004
Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq.
It is unclear whether Cheney or his office received the report at the time it
was distributed, or sometime later.
But two government officials with first-hand knowledge of events said during the
summer of 2003, Libby and other White House officials sought any reports and
other classified information regarding Wilson's Niger trip, and it was provided
at that time.
A relatively small amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was
revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet released a
statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed some aspects of
the debriefing described in the document. But other portions remained highly
classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the
report, two senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say
the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of the March
2002 report when Tenet released his statement.
The federal indictment of Libby states: "On or about June 9, 2003, a number of
classified documents were faxed to the Office of the Vice President to the
personal attention of Libby and another person in the Office of the Vice
President. The faxed documents, which were marked as classified, discussed,
among other things, Wilson and his trip to Niger, but did not mention Wilson by
name. After receiving these documents, Libby and one or more persons in the
Office of the Vice President handwrote the names 'Wilson' and
'Joe Wilson' on the documents."
It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name
handwritten on it by someone in the Vice President's office, was the March 2002 CIA report,
but the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly
was indeed the one with the handwriting.
Cheney, Libby, and others wanted to leak and declassify portions of the report
because they believed that it would undercut the perception that Wilson's
mission had disproved the allegations definitively that Iraq had attempted to
procure uranium from Niger, two senior government officials said in interviews.
Among other things, Wilson had agreed only to interview former Nigerien
officials, instead of current ones, so as not to step on the toes of the State
Department or its then-ambassador to Niger, and he was disadvantaged in his
inquiries, the two senior government officials said.
In an interview, Wilson said it was unnecessary to interview current Nigerien
officials because the then-U.S. ambassador was conducting her own inquiry, and a
decision was made for him to speak to former Nigerien officials while the
ambassador made her inquiries of the current government.
"When I arrived in Niger, I spoke to the ambassador who thought that she had already
debunked the allegations with current Niger officials," Wilson said. "We agreed
then that I would speak to former government officials, who I knew better than
she did because I worked with them while I was on the NSC staff at the White
House, and thereafter. So that was the division of labor."
Wilson also said that the ambassador told her that a "four-star Marine general
had also already talked to current officials, and that he too had concluded and
reported that she believed there was nothing to the allegations."
-- National Journal correspondent Shane Harris also contributed to this report.