Bush's leak
PRESIDENT BUSH was emphatic in July 2003: ''If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." According to a federal prosecutor this week, the president himself authorized the leaking of classified CIA material. This whole affair cries out for a congressional investigation into the leak, and also into the broader question of how President Bush and Vice President Cheney used intelligence to draw the United States into war with Iraq.
By that July the US military had occupied Iraq for two months, and the administration was backpedaling from its prewar assessments that the country was filled with weapons of mass destruction. Most embarrassing had been Bush's assertion in his State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire uranium from Niger. Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson disclosed that July that he had gone to Niger the previous year and found the allegation baseless.
White House aides made it seem Wilson's mission did not influence the CIA assessment of Iraqi weapons. They contended he was sent to Niger mainly because Valerie Plame, his wife, worked for the agency. Unmasking Plame provoked a grand jury investigation, the indictment of Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby, and now the disclosure that Bush was behind the leak of the CIA assessment.
No one is saying Bush wanted Plame's identity to be revealed, and leaks are an integral aspect of official Washington. Bush may technically not have leaked secrets since presidents apparently can declassify information at will. The disclosure that Bush plays the Washington game, however, shows his hypocrisy and ought to inhibit him from threatening newspapers that use leaks to report essential information.
Bush's leak is more telling as an example of how classified information can be used for a political purpose, in this case to limit damage from the earlier misinformation.
Richard Clark, the former White House aide, contends Bush from the first wanted to blame Iraq for the Sept. 11 attacks. Cheney and Libby campaigned to implicate Hussein in the attacks, though the intelligence community could find no link. Cheney visited CIA headquarters 10 times, apparently to make sure the agency produced prowar analyses. Congress needs to probe in depth whether the administration used intelligence agencies to promote its war policy.
The Senate Intelligence Committee did investigate the CIA uranium assessment, and faulted the agency for not sharing information. The Republican congressional leadership, reliably subservient to the White House, has balked at any probe, but was pressured into allowing hearings on abuse of detainees and on warrantless spying. More than these, the selling of the war deserves a hard look. 