Bush asserts executive privilege on compliance in CIA leak case
WASHINGTON - President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.
A House committee chairman, meanwhile, held off on a contempt citation of Mukasey - who had requested the privilege claim - but only as a courtesy to lawmakers not present.
Among the documents sought by House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman are FBI interviews of Vice President Dick Cheney.
They also include notes about the 2003 State of the Union address, during which President Bush made the case for invading Iraq in part by saying Saddam Hussein was pursuing uranium ore to make a nuclear weapon. That information turned out to be wrong.
Waxman rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim - and therefore not turned over to the panel.
"We'll act in the reasonable and appropriate period of time," Waxman, Democrat of California, said. But he made clear that he thinks Mukasey has earned a contempt citation.
"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," Waxman said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"
The assertion of the privilege is not about hiding anything but rather protecting the separation of powers as well as the integrity of future Justice Department investigations of the White House, Mukasey wrote to Bush in a letter dated Tuesday. Several of the subpoenaed reports, he wrote, summarize conversations between Bush and advisers and are direct presidential communications protected by the privilege.
"I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the committee's subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations," Mukasey wrote to Bush. "I believe it is legally permissible for you to assert executive privilege with respect to the subpoenaed documents."
