Bush Orders Full Cooperation in Leaking of Name

ASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — The Justice Department said on Tuesday that it had begun a full investigation into whether Bush administration officials illegally disclosed the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer to journalists, and the White House directed its staff to cooperate.

Mr. Phelps and Mr. Royce were co-authors of an article in July that said that "intelligence officials" had confirmed and expanded on Mr. Novak's account. Their article went beyond Mr. Novak's in stating that the operative, Valerie Plame, worked in "an undercover capacity."

President Bush said he was "absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job" of investigating the case, signaling that he sees no need for an outside special counsel to take over the inquiry from the Justice Department. Speaking to reporters after meeting business executives in Chicago, Mr. Bush said there were "just too many leaks" in Washington from the executive and legislative branches.

"And if there is a leak out of my administration," he added, "I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

The Justice Department told the White House of its decision to move ahead on Monday evening. Mr. Bush was informed early Tuesday morning by the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, who then informed the president's senior staff at its regular 7:30 meeting.

"The president has directed full cooperation with this investigation," Mr. Gonzales said in a memorandum distributed to White House staff members on Tuesday morning.

After receiving a letter from the Justice Department on Tuesday night with specific requests, Mr. Gonzales distributed a second memorandum with details of the information that investigators would seek, including records relating to contacts with the three journalists and those related to the C.I.A. officer's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who has been critical of the administration's use of intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Mr. Wilson has said the disclosure about Ms. Plame, which could have endangered her, appeared to be intended to discourage other critics of the administration from coming forward or to punish him for his criticism.

The case began when Mr. Wilson, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, recounted a mission that he undertook for the C.I.A. in early 2002 to investigate whether President Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium for the Iraqi nuclear weapons program from Niger in western Africa. Mr. Wilson wrote that the administration had twisted evidence about Iraqi weapons "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The developments on Tuesday pushed into high gear the legal and political maneuvering that was common here in the Clinton years, but that Mr. Bush has largely escaped. The fast-paced developments also promised to renew attention on the underlying issues of whether the administration had exaggerated the Iraq threat before the war and sought to discredit critics of its foreign policy.

Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that the Justice Department received a request from the intelligence agency last week to look into whether officials had broken a law that prohibits the naming of covert intelligence operatives.

"And after a prompt review of this request," Mr. Ashcroft said, "the criminal division of the Department of Justice, with the assistance of the F.B.I. as the lead investigative agency, opened a full investigation, and that was last Friday."

He refused to take questions about Democrats' calls to turn over the case to an independent special counsel. The department said later it would consider that option, despite the White House insistence that the Justice Department should handle the case.

"Looking forward, no options are closed," a spokesman for the department, Mark Corallo, said. "We are not closing any doors."

Mr. Ashcroft defended his department's ability to handle the case, saying, "The prosecutors and agents who are and will be handling this investigation are career professionals with extensive experience in handling matters involving sensitive national security information and with experience relating to investigations of unauthorized disclosures of such information."

Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said they planned to begin interviewing and collecting documents from the C.I.A. and the White House on the status of Ms. Plame. They will also explore who had access to classified information about her and how that information may have been passed on.

In another sign of the investigation's significance — and sensitivity — an F.B.I. official said late Tuesday that the bureau intended to have headquarters personnel in the inspections division conduct the investigation, rather than the Washington field office, as originally planned. The aim, the official said, is to let Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the bureau, and other top officials keep closer tabs on the inquiry. Perhaps six agents or more are most likely to be assigned to the investigation at the outset.

For all the developments, the White House projected an image of business as usual. A day after the administration dismissed any suggestions that the disclosure of the intelligence officer's identity had come from Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser and political strategist, Mr. Bush embarked on a campaign fund-raising trip to the Midwest in the morning with Mr. Rove at his side. At a luncheon for campaign donors in Chicago, Mr. Bush did not mention the case in particular but pointedly referred to "this needless partisan bickering that dominates the Washington, D.C., landscape."

Democrats stepped up their call for a special counsel, saying that having the investigation overseen by Mr. Ashcroft, a former Republican senator and Bush appointee, would, at a minimum, create the impression of a conflict of interest.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats tried to force the matter to the floor of the Senate, seeking a vote on a nonbinding resolution that called for an independent counsel. They were thwarted by the Republican leadership, which blocked a vote on procedural grounds. Democrats made clear that they intended to keep up the pressure.

"We will not be denied the opportunity to have this debate and to pursue a legislative response if the administration's unwilling to deal with it themselves," the minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, said.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who led calls for a criminal investigation when Mr. Novak's column appeared, said he was troubled that the White House had waited until 12 hours after receiving formal notification from the Justice Department to direct its staff not to destroy documents.

"Every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence," Mr. Schumer said.

The Justice Department, which has now notified the C.I.A. as well as the White House that it is investigating the leak, faces political and constitutional perils as it seeks to get around legal protections for journalists. It is highly unusual to seek access to a reporter's sources, and officials said that as a result such investigations of leaks are notoriously tough to succeed.

Republican officials said they were confident that the firestorm would blow over relatively quickly.

"The general view inside the White House among senior staff is that this is going to create a few rocky political days, that it's mainly the Democrats pushing it and that if all the Republicans stay on board, the story goes away," a Republican worker with close ties to the White House said.

Mr. Novak said on CNN on Monday that he had not been called by anyone in the Bush administration with the information, but that the subject arose when he was reporting on a trip by Mr. Wilson to Africa. But Newsday quoted Mr. Novak in its article as saying, "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me."

I'd have finished this essay sooner if it weren't for all the dang interruptions. Some weirdo calling himself "Anonymous Senior Administration Official" kept ringing my phone off the hook, peddling some CIA agent's name whose hubby (can't recall exactly) traveled to Africa looking for yellowcake sales receipts with Saddam's signature, or some such...anybody know anything about this? At first I thought it was some nutty new sales pitch by some nutty telemarketer trying to beat the Wednesday 'Do-Not-Call List' deadline. 'Keep it up , buddy,' I told the caller, 'and I'll have the Feds frog-march ya out of that house in handcuffs!' Then I thought maybe it's that South African businessman who keeps clogging my email with some incredible business proposition.
Okay, okay...I'll confess: There were no phone calls. I made it up. I think I was probably carried away by the spirit of the moment (to borrow a line).
So what's the media fuss all about this time?
First, chalk this whole thing up as more bad luck for Democrats. Just as Bush was beginning to 'slip' in polls, Bang! out of nowhere comes a "scandal" big enough to make Bush's ratings soar.
The "growing controversy" centers on who "leaked" the super-ultra-secret identity of a covert agent everyone but Robert Novak knew wasn't a covert agent but a pencil-pusher at CIA. Covert agents need low-profile, and, for whatever reason, CIA doesn't think marrying an Ambassador is a fabulous way to lower your profile. So Valerie Plame, wife of former Clinton NSC aid Joe Wilson, was good for pencil work but not cloak and dagger. So clandestine, so deeply-concealed was the mystery of Plame working at CIA that the Washington Post claims two "Senior administration officials" tried to get a bunch of reporters interested in a 'Wife-Gets-Job-For-Hubby-In-High-Profile-Iraq-Probe' angle, but only one reporter bit. Nepotism in Washington? Say it ain't so! (By the way, CIA neither confirms nor denies the identity of covert agents. CIA confirmed Plame's identity and employment when Novak called, which shows Plame was no covert agent.)
Democrats, who complained bitterly of Starr's $60-million-dollar independent probe, demand bitterly a Starr-like $60-million-dollar independent probe.
In a bid to show they're principled and consistent, Democrats, who blast the Patriot Act as horrid abomination, say the Patriot Act is indispensable here to probe who "leaked" to the media what the media and everyone already knew. Democrats also deny politics or the looming election season has anything to do with this, just undying devotion to high-minded principles so common in Washington.
Democrats say, Reuters reports, that "if such an incident had occurred during the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, Republicans who control Congress would be calling for hearings and issuing subpoenas." I might add that if such an incident had occurred during the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, Democrats, adhering scrupulously to high standards of ethics, would denounce calls for hearings and issuance of subpoenas as nothing but a right-wing witch hunt or fishing expedition to discredit Bill Clinton. Indeed, were it not for minor matters like Whitewatergate, Cattlegate, Travelgate, Zippergate, Paulagate, Juanitagate, donorgate, Chinagate, Pardongate, Filegate, etc., Clinton's would be The Most Ethical Administration In Human History.
MSNBC reports, quoting a profoundly knowledgeable college professor, that "the launch of a formal (Justice Dept.) investigation could be 'a turning point in terms of public perception'" of Bush, "a point of transition which eventually seeps down to public consciousness." I can vouch for that. Indeed, when I heard the Justice Dept. had opened a probe, I sensed a change of my public perception of Bush, a point of transition that immediately seeped down to my public consciousness; then a powerful desire overcame me, an urge to vote for Dean! Kucinich! Kerry! Lieberman! Anyone but George!
Bush's vow to cooperate fully with investigators was especially damaging to my public perception. Aren't moral presidents supposed to invoke Executive Privilege, suborn perjury, obstruct justice, cover-up, delay, deny, destroy a la Clinton? I'm confused.
Incidentally, CIA requests for probes of possible leaks are so rare, the Justice Dept. gets about one a week.
What's the fallout from all this, politically? How'll this shake out? Not to be pessimistic or anything, but this 'scandal,' phony though it is, has got the element of simplicity going for it -- it's easy to grasp -- and might resonate in ways that Enron and other previous pseudo-Bush "scandals" couldn't.
Indeed, I can, in one brief sentence, wrap up the gist of this whole 'scandal':
"Senior administration officials," in an act of 'revenge' against a prominent antiwar critic, brilliantly committed felonies by disclosing to reporters, who didn't seem interested because they knew felonies weren't being committed, the ultra-secret identity of a deep-undercover CIA agent that everyone and his sister knew worked at CIA because she wasn't deep-undercover at all, just an agency analyst who, to ensure a fair and impartial probe into White House claims that Saddam sought yellowcake Uranium from Niger, pulled agency strings so that former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, an antiwar activist and her husband (but that's just a coincidence) got appointed to head up a probe so thorough and exhaustive it lasted 8 whole arduous Sweet-Mint-Tea-Sipping days "with dozens of people" in Niger, after which the good Ambassador, in a classified report submitted to appropriate authorities at the New York Times, brilliantly OUTS himself (and by extension his wife) as CIA-connected, but that's not the point because, he says, the point is that after a week of not searching for evidence to back up White House claims, he failed to find evidence to back up White House claims, which, he said, drove him to think what he fairly and impartially wanted to think all along, to wit, that Bush IS AN EVIL LIAR and SADDAM'S INNOCENT and NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
Now, try cramming that cogent one-liner on a bumper sticker ;-)
Sure, the Democrats are toasting champagne, clicking their heels over Bush's grave.
Truth is, Plame-"Gate", or whatever they're calling it, will go about as far politically as the BUSH-KNEW-ABOUT-9/11-BEFORE-9/11-BUT-DID-NOTHING-TO-STOP-IT! "scandal" which was supposed to force Bush from office. Democrats were toasting champagne, clicking their heels over Bush's grave. Or the BUSH-DIDN'T-KNOW-ABOUT-9/11-BEFORE-9/11-BUT-SHOULD'VE! "scandal" which was supposed to force Bush from office. Or, recall the No-Weapons-Of-Mass-Destruction-Found-In-Iraq -- BUSH LIED! "scandal" which was supposed to force Bush from office. Or, how about 16-Word-"Gate"? Or the Bush-Was-In-Bed-With-Ken-Lay-And-Enron! "scandal" that would march Bush frog-tied out of the White House in handcuffs.
By the way, under penalty of law, you must keep my secret identity -- "JohnHuang2" -- and my work here at Free Republic as spammer and 'analyst,' a secret. Got that?
Anyway, that's...
My two cents...
"JohnHuang2"

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October 1, 2003