Bush's statements about finding the leaker ludicrous

Salon
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2006/04/07/libby_case/

The deception Bush can't spin

Libby's testimony shows that Bush disclosed national secrets for political gain -- and makes Bush's statements about finding the leaker ludicrous.

By Joe Conason


April 7, 2006 | If we are to believe the grand jury testimony of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- as reported by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in court papers (PDF) -- then the president of the United States has been deceiving the country ever since the CIA leaks investigation began in 2003.

Compared with other deceptions that George W. Bush has perpetrated in the years since he promised to restore honor and integrity to the Oval Office, this one cannot be spun away as a misunderstanding, a "misunderestimate" or a mistake. From the moment that the Justice Department opened its probe of the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity to the press, Bush insisted that he wanted to find and punish the culprits, especially if any of them were among his White House staff. He claimed to consider the leaking of classified information to be a matter of the utmost seriousness.

And he let his press secretary insist repeatedly that the White House had absolutely no idea how this terrible thing had happened.

We have come a long way since then, of course. We have learned that at least two of the highest-ranking White House staff members leaked Plame's identity to reporters as part of a broader effort to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for daring to draw attention to White House misuse of intelligence on Iraq in an Op-Ed in the New York Times. We know that Libby, then the vice president's chief of staff and national security advisor, and Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, both participated in that effort -- and that both have lied repeatedly about their roles in the scheme.

We also know that Vice President Dick Cheney was behind Libby's leaking. As one of the most vocal sources of misinformation about Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction during the months leading to the invasion, Cheney was particularly eager to "push back" against Wilson in the spring and summer of 2003. No doubt his zeal intensified with each day that those weapons failed to turn up in occupied Iraq.