Bush | The Week

last updated 8 January 2015

President Bush clearly doesn't like leakers, said John Dickerson in Slate.com. In fact, he views them as 'œlow-level, frustrated bureaucrats who feed their own egos by passing along juicy tidbits to mangy reporters.' It turns out those bureaucrats are in good company. Court documents filed last week indicate that former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis 'œScooter' Libby told a grand jury that Bush indirectly authorized him to spill key intelligence about Iraq in 2003. Libby said that his boss, Dick Cheney, told him to release a portion of the National Intelligence Estimate that suggested that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger for nuclear weapons. Libby, who faces charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation, shared the information with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. His leak was 'œpart of a larger administration effort,' Libby testified, to rebut critics who claimed that the White House had 'œdistorted evidence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction during the march to war.'

The worst part, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times, is that the information put out to the public was itself distorted. A week before Libby told Miller about Saddam's supposed nuclear ambitions, Secretary of State Colin Powell told three other reporters that U.S. intelligence agencies were 'œno longer carrying it as a credible item.' In other words, the White House was 'œwilling to use a faulty bit of intelligence to defend the war scam.' The leak was a lie, and it originated in the Oval Office.

Stop calling this a leak, said John Podhoretz in the New York Post. 'œA 'leak' is the unauthorized release of government information,' and it's illegal. But Libby said that he told Miller about Saddam's uranium plans 'œbecause he was authorized to do so by the president himself.' Constitutionally, the president 'œcan declassify a document merely by declaring it unclassified.' In fact, 'œby the time this 'leak' occurred, the contents' of the intelligence estimates relating to Iraq 'œwere almost entirely public.' In short, this story is just a 'œbogus kerfuffle,' said Andrew McCarthy in National Review Online, 'œmanufactured by the press—which should be ashamed of itself, since this kind of 'leaking' is the media's stock in trade.'