Bush authorized push against Wilson

Murrah Waas has a report up now on the National Review which details how President Bush personally authorized VP Dick Cheney to "get the facts out" against Ambassador Joe Wilsons claims that the Niger Uranium story was bogus.

President Bush told the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case that he directed Vice President Dick Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter allegations made by former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV that his administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with the president's interview.

Bush also told federal prosecutors during his June 24, 2004, interview in the Oval Office that he had directed Cheney, as part of that broader effort, to disclose highly classified intelligence information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson, the sources said.

This in and of itself isn't surprising news as previous reports had revealed that President Bush had authorized classified portions of the NIE to be released, and had even delegated part of his own authority to Dick Cheney for doing just that. But when it comes to the critical issue, did Bush authorize Cheney or Libby to reveal classified information about Joseph Wilson's CIA agent wife?

But Bush told investigators that he was unaware that Cheney had directed I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, to covertly leak the classified information to the media instead of releasing it to the public after undergoing the formal governmental declassification processes.

Bush also said during his interview with prosecutors that he had never directed anyone to disclose the identity of then-covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife. Bush said he had no information that Cheney had disclosed Plame's identity or directed anyone else to do so.

So we don't exactly have an admission against interests here. But this doesn't do much to take the target off of Cheney's back, especially since his scribblings in the margins have already been revealed by Patrick Fitzgerald.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson himself went public in an op-ed piece in The New York Times and on NBC's "Meet the Press" with his claims that the Bush administration had misrepresented the Niger information to make the case for war.

Among those who took notice was Cheney.

Cheney cut Wilson's op-ed out of the newspaper and wrote in the margins: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question. Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

In grand jury testimony, Libby testified that Cheney would "often... cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife he had" and "look at, think about it." Whether Libby saw Cheney's annotation of Wilson's column is not clear. Libby testified: "It's possible if it was sitting on his desk that, you know, my eye went across it."

Not exactly a smoking gun, but definately food for thought.

Vyan