US: 'Scooter' Libby may shed light on what his former bosses ordered him to do, writes Denis Staunton
Lewis "Scooter" Libby's claim that President Bush authorised him to pass classified information to a journalist draws the president directly into the CIA leak scandal for the first time and confirms White House fears that Mr Libby's evidence in court next year could be explosive.
A former chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, Mr Libby will go on trial in January for obstructing an inquiry and lying to FBI officers investigating the disclosure in 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA officer.
Ms Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, angered the administration by writing an opinion piece in the New York Times casting doubt on Mr Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to import uranium from Niger. Mr Wilson had led a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate the uranium claim and concluded that it was probably a hoax.
Court papers submitted this week by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald make clear that Mr Cheney was determined not only to broadcast the fact that he had not initiated the Niger mission, but to cast doubt on Mr Wilson's credentials.
"At some point after the publication of the July 6th, 2003 Op Ed by Mr Wilson, vice-president Cheney, defendant's immediate superior, expressed concerns to defendant regarding whether Mr Wilson's trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr Wilson's wife . . . Disclosing the belief that Mr Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice-president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr Wilson's credibility if Mr Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism," Mr Fitzgerald wrote.
Mr Wilson claimed in his newspaper article that there was no evidence that Iraq had sought to procure uranium but the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified intelligence assessment, concluded in October 2002 that Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium".
Mr Cheney told Mr Libby to leak the relevant passages from the NIE to Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter who acted as a 'cheerleader' for the administration during the prelude to war in Iraq. When Mr Libby demurred, the vice-president told him that the leak had been authorised by Mr Bush. "Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller - getting approval from the president through the vice-president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval - were unique in his recollection," Mr Fitzgerald wrote.
Mr Libby testified that nobody apart from the president, the vice-president and himself knew about the decision to leak the classified information.
"Defendant testified in the grand jury that he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms Miller, other key officials - including Cabinet-level officials - were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson's trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003," Mr Fitzgerald wrote.
Mr Libby has admitted revealing Ms Plame's identity as a CIA officer to journalists, including Ms Miller, saying he received the information from the vice-president. The new court papers do not suggest that either Mr Bush or Mr Cheney authorised that leak.
However, a report this week in the National Journal cites government officials claiming that Mr Libby has asserted that Mr Cheney "had more broadly authorised him to leak classified information to a number of journalists during the run-up to war with Iraq, as part of an administration effort to make the case to go to war".
The magazine also reports that Mr Libby claimed that Mr Bush authorised him to provide classified information to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward. Among the most damning elements of Mr Fitzgerald's court filing is his assertion that Mr Libby lied to investigators to protect the credibility of the White House.