US: The White House struggled to contain the fallout from last week's indictment for perjury of a top official, as Democrats called on President George Bush to "come clean" about his administration's role in the leaking of a CIA agent's identity.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, vice-president Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff, resigned last Friday after a grand jury indicted him on five counts of obstructing justice, perjury and making false statements. Mr Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, escaped an indictment last week but could face charges later as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation continues.
The Democrats' leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney should apologise to the American people for the White House's action in leaking CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's name to reporters.
"There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House. This has gotten way out of hand, and the American people deserve better than this," he said.
Last week's indictment says that both Mr Libby and Mr Rove spoke to journalists about Ms Wilson, whose husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is a critic of the administration who publicly discredited a claim that Saddam Hussein tried to import nuclear materials from Niger before the Iraq war.
White House spokesman Scott McLennan denied emphatically in 2003 that either man had anything to do with the leak and Mr Bush said that anyone in the White House who was involved would be sacked.
Mr Reid said yesterday that, regardless of whether he is charged with any offence, Mr Rove should now resign.
"Here is a man who the president said if he was involved, if anyone in the administration was involved, out they would go. Anybody who is involved in this, they're gone," he said.
Mr Bush is also expected this week to announce who will replace Harriet Miers as his nominee to the supreme court. Ms Miers withdrew her nomination after opposition from conservatives, and the president is expected to choose an experienced judge with an unambiguously conservative philosophy.
Mr Bush has been badly damaged by the Libby indictment, the Miers withdrawal and the war in Iraq, which has already cost the lives of more than 2,000 Americans and at least 30,000 Iraqis. Since his re-election in 2004, the president has seen his plan to partly privatise the US state pension system collapse because of lack of support from Congress and his government's response to Hurricane Katrina criticised as inadequate and chaotic.
The US economy is buoyant, growing at 3.8 per cent a year but soaring energy prices and health care costs mean that few Americans feel better off. Republican candidates are avoiding public appearances with Mr Bush, whom many now view as a liability as next year's mid-term congressional elections approach.
Political commentators have urged Mr Bush to follow the example of Ronald Reagan, who rescued his second term after the Iran-Contra scandal by shaking up his White House team.
Democratic senator Charles Schumer said that last week's indictment shows "a White House that has run out of steam, whether it's ethical issues or Katrina or Iraq or the budget deficit, high gas prices . . . And the real question for President Bush is going to be: is he going to be like Nixon - hunker down, get into the bunker, admit no mistakes or like Reagan, who actually admitted mistakes, did a mid-course correction and brought in new people, bipartisan people, people above ethical approach into the White House."
The indictment against Mr Libby has highlighted Mr Cheney's role in making the case for war in Iraq. Mr Cheney was the most robust advocate of war, claiming publicly that Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda and was building up a nuclear arsenal despite CIA advice that such information was false.
Democratic senator Christopher Dodd said yesterday that Mr Libby's indictment raises questions about what Mr Cheney knew of the efforts to discredit Mr Wilson and to reveal his wife's covert CIA status.