Plame Developments

Wilson on Meet the Press... passages I thought interesting are bolded...
________________
MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.

Ambassador Wilson, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

AMB. WILSON: Thanks, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: I want to bring our viewers back to some recent history here and put this all in context. This is what started this whole discussion with you, the president's State of the Union message January 28, 2003.

(Videotape, State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003):

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: You saw the president say that and thought what?

AMB. WILSON: I thought, well, he must not have been talking about Niger because he would know better if he was. I then called the Department of State and talked to the Bureau of African Affairs, who had not seen the State of the Union address, but their interpretation was that he was probably speaking about another African country, which was fine for me, so long as he wasn't talking about Niger.

MR. RUSSERT: Then on June 8, Dr. Rice, the national security adviser, appeared on MEET THE PRESS, and I asked her about how those words wound up in the president's State of the Union address, and she said this:

(Videotape, MEET THE PRESS, June 8, 2003):

DR. CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: When you saw that?

AMB. WILSON: Well, I knew that she had fundamentally misstated the facts. In fact, she had lied about it. I had gone out and I had undertaken this study. I had come back and said that this was not feasible. There was already lots of suspicion about the documentation, and in fact, as it's been borne out, when the vice president was on this show and you had asked him if he had asked the question about going to Niger, he had said, "Well, I asked the CIA briefer about these reports, and he had come back and told me within a couple of days that there was nothing to them." That was a year before the State of the Union address. This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations.

MR. RUSSERT: George Tenet in a statement said that a Niger official did say to you there may have been discussions about a potential business dealings and maybe that could have been a suggestion of uranium.

AMB. WILSON: That's right. And, of course, as I put in the book, there was a meeting on the margins of an OAU summit between a senior Niger official and an Iraqi official who turns out to be the former minister of information, Baghdad Bob. At that meeting, uranium was not discussed. It would be a tragedy to think that we went to war over a conversation in which uranium was not discussed because the Niger official was sufficiently sophisticated to think that perhaps he might have wanted to discuss uranium at some later date.

MR. RUSSERT: The president spoke to the nation in January, Dr. Rice was on this program June 8. On July 6, you appeared on MEET THE PRESS. You wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times and said this: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

And then eight days after your appearance on MEET THE PRESS and that New York Times piece, Robert Novak wrote a syndicated column and this is what it said: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger."

When you saw that, your reaction?

AMB. WILSON: Well, I was furious. He had contacted--actually, he had spoken to a stranger who happened to know me on July 8, and I outline that conversation in the book.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me do that, because this is important. This is just two days after your appearance on MEET THE PRESS. Two days, this is "Tuesday afternoon, July 8, six days before Novak's article about Valerie and me, a friend showed up at my office with a strange and disturbing tale. He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue towards my office, near the White House, when he came upon Novak. He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him as they were headed in the same direction. Novak acquiesced. Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy. `It was a minor problem,' Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before. My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me. Novak answered, `Wilson's an (expletive).' The CIA sent him. His wife, Valerie, works for the CIA. She's a weapons of mass destruction specialist. She sent him.' At that point, my friend and Novak went their separate ways. My friend headed straight for my office a couple of blocks away. Once he related this unsettling story to me, I asked him to immediately write down the details of the conversation and afterwards ushered him out of my office."

AMB. WILSON: This was before Novak had any confirmation because he talked to me a couple of days later seeking a confirmation of my wife's employment. The odds of his running into somebody on Pennsylvania Avenue who knew he, since I don't know a lot of people in Washington, are remote. The question I have in all of this is how many other people was Novak--how many other strangers on the streets of Washington, D.C., was Novak sharing this information with before he even had enough to permit him to go to print?

MR. RUSSERT: Why does your friend accost Mr. Novak? Do you know?

AMB. WILSON: Well, I think anybody who is a familiar face on television is frequently spoken to on the sidewalks. It happens even to me, and I'm not nearly as familiar as Mr. Novak.

MR. RUSSERT: Again, this was only two days after July 6 MEET THE PRESS and New York Times, but now you say something else in your book and this is it: "After my appearance on CNN in early March 2003, when I first asserted that the U.S. government knew more about the Niger uranium matter than it was letting on, I am told by a source close to the House Judiciary Committee that the Office of the Vice President--either the vice president himself or, more likely, his chief of staff, Lewis (`Scooter') Libby, chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to a `workup' on me. As I understand it, this meant they were going to take a closer look at who I was and what my agenda might be. The immediate effect of the workup, I am told by a member of the press, citing White House sources, was a long harangue against the two of us within the White House walls. Over a period of several months, Libby evidently seized opportunities to rail openly against me as an `[expletive] playboy' who went on a boondoggle `arranged by his CIA wife'--and was a Democratic Gore supporter to boot."

You're saying that in March the White House started talking about you and your "CIA wife"?

AMB. WILSON: That's my understanding from not just that one particular source but corroborated by other sources and offered actually by other sources from different walks of life, that after I appeared on CNN and said I thought the government knew more about this Niger business than was letting on, there was this meeting at which it was decided to run an intelligence collection operation against me, which led to the learning of my wife's identity and her employment.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, you've asked Bob Novak to reveal his sources. Would you reveal your sources?

AMB. WILSON: Actually, I haven't asked Bob Novak to reveal his sources. And I think you can understand after you interviewed Mr. Woodward last week that when 75 people speak to Mr. Woodward with the authorization of the president and only two of them want to be identified, you can imagine that those who have other information but are fearful of what the White House might do, they also do not want to be identified. And I say that because, of course, I mention in the book that there are also reports from journalists back to me that they're fearful of writing these stories. One journalist said because he was afraid he would end up in Guantanamo, which is basically I think a metaphor for their being cut off. Another one said that, of course, they had two children in private schools and a mortgage. Now, I've since heard from other journalists that even the most mildly critical articles about this administration yield top-level phone calls back to their editors including phone calls from Mr. Libby himself to their editors.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, you also said that Newt Gingrich, the former speaker, was at one of these meetings on the workup. He said that is absolutely, totally false.

AMB. WILSON: Yeah, and it may be false. I was just reporting what I'd heard from a number of different sources. The fact to the matter is this could all be cleared up rather quickly if somebody were to step forward and say, "This is how it happened." The fact that they're not suggests that they're stonewalling. The president of the United States has said, "I want to get to the bottom of this." There are only, as I put out in my book, a few people who live at that nexus between national security policy and politics. The president said he wants to get to the bottom of it. Either he's not in control of his staff or he's not serious or his senior staff is simply insubordinate and is stonewalling and covering up.

MR. RUSSERT: We're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about some of the people that you suspect right after this. More of Ambassador Joe Wilson.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back talking to Ambassador Joe Wilson. His book, "Politics of Truth." Here's the book. "According to my sources, between March 2003 and the appearance of my article in July"--in The Times--"the workup on me that turned up the information on Valerie was shared with Karl Rove, who then circulated it in administration and neoconservative circles."

So you're saying as early as March the information about your wife being a CIA operative was being distributed by the White House?

AMB. JOSEPH WILSON: That's the information I have. That also would explain how Mr. Novak got information so quickly, how to--a decision was made for two people to call six journalists and leak the information within a couple of days. And it also explains how Cliff May, who wrote for the National Review online, suggested in a matter of days after my article appeared and a leak appeared, that it was widely known in Washington that my wife worked for the CIA. It was not widely known. None of my friends, for example, knew it. So it's hard to believe that it was widely known unless somebody else put that story out.

MR. RUSSERT: You mentioned Mr. Rove's name. You also say this on page 442, "The man attacking my integrity and reputation - and, I believe, quite possibly the person who exposed my wife's identity - was the same Scooter Libby"--in Vice President Cheney's office. Then you go on to say, "The other name that has most often been repeated to me in connection with the inquiry and disclosure into my background and Valerie's is that of Elliott Abrams, who gained infamy in the Iran-Contra scandal during the first Bush administration."

But then you say this: "In fact, seniors advisers close to the president may well have been clever enough to have used others to do the actual leading, in order to keep their fingerprints off the crime."

So you don't know who did it, even though you're naming names.

AMB. WILSON: Well, I have--I'm naming names. What I'm doing is I'm sharing with the people outside the Beltway what is broadly spoken about here within Washington. I sat at the intersection of this information for several months, where people were getting information and passing it to me. I sifted through all of that. I attempted to ensure that it was not circular reporting, that I had sourcing from this that was two different sources from different walks of life indeed. The names of Abrams and Libby and Rove have all appeared in public. However, this ties it all together. Again, I go back to what I said earlier, there are only a few people who sit at the nexus. If the president really wanted to get to the bottom of this, he could simply call them in and ask them, and he should, because what they did is what his father called the most insidious of treachery. He called them insidious traitors.

MR. RUSSERT: The White House has denied that Karl Rove, Elliott Abrams, Scooter Libby, had anything to do with this, and they say you have a political agenda. This was on reference, August 21, 2003, a speech you gave in Washington state. Let's play it and come back and talk about it:

(Videotape, August 21, 2003):

AMB. WILSON: I don't think we're going to let this drop. At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: "Frog-marched out in handcuffs"; "Trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."

AMB. WILSON: As I say in the literally first paragraph of the book, Karl Rove, a week after the Novak article appeared, called Chris Matthews of NBC and said, "Wilson's wife is fair game," that it was OK to go after somebody's spouse because you disagreed with what her husband said. And now remember, when you talk about partisan, what I did was my civic duty to hold my government to account for what it had said, a pattern of deception to the Congress of the United States and the American people, including these 16 words in the State of the Union address. I did not put those 16 words in the State of the Union address. Indeed, had the president heeded the report that I and others had submitted, had the vice president heeded what the CIA briefer had told him, had the national security adviser and her deputy remembered the two memoranda and the telephone call relating to this particular subject, that line might not have been in the president's State of the Union address. Either they were derelict or they were deceptive.

But the partisanship that goes into this was the attack on myself and on my family. This country is created with checks and balances guaranteed to, one, hold the government accountable for its actions and for its words, and two, to give citizens and the press certain privileges and rights to take on the government and challenge the government on what it says and does. For this government to have attacked me personally and then to have done what they did to my wife is, frankly, un-American.

MR. RUSSERT: When Rove made the alleged phone call, it was after your wife's identity as a CIA agent had been made. Is there any crime in saying that your wife was fair game?

AMB. WILSON: I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know whether there was a crime. I've seen what Sam Dash has written and I've seen what others have written with respect to the Patriot Act, not just the Intelligence Identities Act. What I have said--that I thought that this was a good place to start the investigation, irrespective of whether or not Mr. Rove or, indeed, anybody else can be convicted of a crime. The fact that they had to open an investigation is an indication that the national security of this country was betrayed by some people who the former George Bush, former President George Bush, called the most insidious of traitors.

Now, with respect to Rove, let me just also say the idea that you take it upon yourself to drag an innocent family member into the public square to administer a beating is just simply unacceptable. And this sort of political shenanigans has no place when we are discussing serious issues of national security, in which now we have over 700 American soldiers dead and $150 billion spent in a war that is--as one Republican told me the other night, "We are on the verge of a strategic catastrophe."

MR. RUSSERT: A supporter of the president will point out that in The Daily Iowan in December of '03 you called Dick Cheney "a lying SOB" to an audience, and that you are an active participant in the campaign of John Kerry, and that that's your political agenda:

Attack the vice president by calling him those names, talk about Karl Rove in handcuffs; that you're a partisan Democrat supporting Kerry.

AMB. WILSON: Well, with respect to the vice president, that may be the gentlest and kindest thing I've had to say to him, about him, in recent months. And I think the record is clear, and you can go back to his speech in August. You can go back to his many statements about the reconstruction of nuclear weapons, again, well after he was told by his own CIA that there was nothing to this. There was a pattern of deception and lying to the Congress of the United States that got us into this terrible war. Again, with respect to my partisan activities or the fact that I support John Kerry, I am an American. This is a democracy. I am perfectly entitled to hold my political opinions and I'm perfectly entitled to share them. This president said on this show that he wanted this election to be a referendum on his first term. And well it should be. And I intend to enrich that political debate with what I know to the fullest extent possible.

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued. Joe Wilson. The book is "Politics of Truth." We thank you for sharing your views.

AMB. WILSON: Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: And we'll be right back, right after this.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: That's all for today. We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.

 

Leak Prosecutor Seeks To Question Reporters


By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 15, 2004; Page A07


A special prosecutor investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA operative sought yesterday to interview two Washington Post reporters in connection with the probe.

Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald told Post lawyer Eric Lieberman that he wants to talk to Post reporters Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler but declined to discuss the information he is seeking, Lieberman said. Lieberman said he told Fitzgerald he would respond to the request next week.

The request to interview reporters may suggest the probe is winding up, because Justice Department guidelines require that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before taking the step of calling reporters before a grand jury. If that is the case, as some attorneys for witnesses believe, it is not clear whether Fitzgerald is moving toward seeking indictments in the case or whether he is preparing to complete it without bringing criminal charges.

Because the probe involves a possible national security breach, it is being conducted amid extraordinary secrecy. Fitzgerald has interviewed some current and former White House officials repeatedly, people involved in the case have said. Several administration officials have testified before a grand jury in recent weeks, some for the first time.

The investigators are trying to determine who revealed CIA officer Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert D. Novak last July, a possible crime if it was done with the intention of exposing her undercover status.

At the CIA's request, Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, investigated claims that Iraq sought to purchase uranium and subsequently accused the Bush administration of overstating Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. He has suggested that his wife was exposed in retaliation for his findings.

 

Oh dear.
________________

June 2, 2004
Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:35 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer about possibly representing him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, White House officials said Wednesday night.

There was no indication that Bush was a target of the leak investigation, but the president's move suggested he anticipates being questioned about what he knows.

A federal grand jury has questioned numerous White House and administration officials to learn who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media. Wilson has charged that officials made the disclosure in an effort to discredit him.

``The president has made it very clear he wants everyone to cooperate fully with the investigation and that would include himself,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

He confirmed that Bush had contacted Washington attorney Jim Sharp. ``In the event the president needs his advice, I expect he probably would retain him,'' McClellan said.

A number of journalists have received federal subpoenas to face questioning about the leak, and FBI officials have visited the White House to interview officials. There was no indication Bush had been questioned yet.

Bush has been an outspoken critics of leaks, saying they can be very damaging, but he has expressed doubts that the government's investigation will pinpoint who was responsible.

Democrats seized on the news to criticize the president.

``It speaks for itself that the president initially claimed he wanted to get to the bottom of this, but now he's suddenly retained a lawyer,'' said Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. ``Bush shouldn't drag the country through grand juries and legal maneuvering. President Bush should come forward with what he knows and come clean with the American people.''

Plame was first identified by syndicated columnist and TV commentator Robert Novak in a column last July. Novak said his information came from administration sources.

Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked because of his criticism of Bush administration claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger, which Wilson investigated for the CIA and found to be untrue.

Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime. The grand jury has heard from witnesses and combed through thousands of pages of documents turned over by the White House, but returned no indictments.

The probe is being handled by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, appointed after Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from case because of his political ties to the White House.

Absent a breakthrough from the documents or a cooperating witness, prosecutors may be forced to try to identify the leaker through Novak or other reporters. However, journalists pressed by the prosecution could assert a First Amendment privilege to protect their sources.

Wilson has suggested in a book that the leaker was Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. But Wilson's book, ``The Politics of Truth,'' give no conclusive evidence for the claim.

The White House denies the claim and accuses Wilson of seeking to bolster the campaign of Democrat John Kerry, for whom he has acted as a foreign policy adviser.

Wilson also said it's possible the leak came from Elliott Abrams, a figure in the Reagan administration Iran-Contra affair and now a member of Bush's National Security Council. And Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, may have circulated information about Wilson and Plame ``in administration and neoconservative circles'' even if Rove was not himself the leaker, Wilson writes.

Another possibility is that two lower-level officials in Cheney's office -- John Hannah or David Wurmser -- leaked Plame's identity at the behest of higher-ups ``to keep their fingerprints off the crime,'' Wilson speculates.

Bush expressed doubt last year that the leaker would be found.

``You tell me: how many sources have you had that's leaked information, that you've exposed or had been exposed? Probably none,'' Bush said last October.

``I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official,'' Bush said then. ``I don't have any idea. I'd like to. I want to know the truth.''

But Bush said, ``This is a large administration and there's a lot of senior officials.''

 

Looking at the Plame thing and the Chalabi thing, it wouldn't surprise me if Bush is consulting lawyers regarding the Chalabi affair and using the Plame Affair for cover (or maybe both?).

Honor and integrity.

 

Cheney Reportedly Interviewed in Leak of C.I.A. Officer's Name
By DAVID JOHNSTON, NYTimes

WASHINGTON, June 4 — Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, people who have been involved in official discussions about the case said on Friday.

Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, according to people officially informed about the case. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors' questions.

The interview of the vice president was part of a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a federal law that makes it a crime to divulge the name of an undercover officer intentionally.

Mr. Cheney is not thought to be a focus of the inquiry, which Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago, heads. Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed by the Justice Department as a special counsel in the case.

White House officials have denied that any senior aides to President Bush disclosed the name of the officer, Valerie Plame, to Robert Novak, who wrote in his syndicated column in July 2003 that Ms. Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

It is not clear when or where Mr. Cheney was interviewed, but he was not questioned under oath and he has not been asked to appear before the grand jury, people officially informed about the case said. His willingness to answer questions was voluntary and apparently followed Mr. Bush's repeated instructions to aides to cooperate with the investigation.

On Friday, a spokesman for Mr. Cheney declined to comment on the case. The spokesman, Kevin Kellems, referred questions about the vice president to Mr. Fitzgerald, whose office has declined to comment on the investigation. A telephone call to Terrence O'Donnell, the vice president's private lawyer, was not returned.

Mr. Bush has acknowledged that he had met with a Washington criminal lawyer, Jim Sharp, about the possibility that prosecutors might want to interview him about the case. So far, the White House has made no mention of Mr. Cheney's interview or whether it influenced the president's decision to meet with Mr. Sharp.

Mr. Bush is not thought to be a focus of the grand jury inquiry. On Thursday, Mr. Bush said he did not object to the prosecutors' inquiry.

"I've told our administration that we'll fully cooperate with their investigation," Mr. Bush said in response to a question about the case during a news conference about the Australian contribution to the war in Iraq. "I want to know the truth, and I'm willing to cooperate myself. And you need to refer your questions to them.

"In terms of whether or not I need advice from my counsel, this is a criminal matter, it's a serious matter, I have met with an attorney to determine whether or not I need his advice. And if I deem I need his advice, I'll probably hire him."

The decision by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney to seek private legal counsel is routine for high-level officials when they become involved, even tangentially, in legal issues unrelated to their official duties.

 

Leak Probe Appears To Be in Active Phase


By Susan Schmidt and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, June 6, 2004; Page A05


Vice President Cheney's recent interview with representatives of a special prosecutor looking into the leak of a covert CIA officer's name is the latest suggestion that the grand jury probe is in a highly active phase.

News of the Cheney interview, confirmed yesterday by a government official who was briefed on it and who refused to be identified publicly, comes on the heels of last week's disclosure that President Bush has lined up a private attorney in case special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald seeks to question him about the public disclosure last summer of the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame. The grand jury investigation, now in its sixth month, has for the most part been conducted in extraordinary secrecy because it involves a national security matter.

In recent weeks, however, prosecutors have subpoenaed at least two reporters and sought to interview others in an effort to learn whether Plame's identity was intentionally disclosed by administration officials who sought to cast doubt on the credibility of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger to investigate claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium there. The agency asked Wilson to make the trip after Cheney asked for more information about the Niger claims. Wilson, a critic of the Iraq war, publicly charged a year ago that the administration had exaggerated Iraq's efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Last July, syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that two administration officials told him Wilson was selected for the mission by his wife, Plame, a CIA specialist on weapons of mass destruction. Disclosure of a covert officer's name is a criminal act if it is done intentionally by someone authorized to have the information.

Lawyers representing witnesses in the case said the latest flurry of witness interview requests could signal that prosecutors are about to bring the investigation to a close. Several lawyers said they expect Fitzgerald would want to talk to Bush and Cheney no matter how his investigation comes out in the end.

"It was inevitable he would talk to both of them," one lawyer said. He, like other lawyers in the case, asked not to be quoted by name.

The White House declined to comment on Cheney's interview with prosecutors, which was first reported Friday night by the New York Times, or to say when it occurred. Cheney's office referred inquiries to Fitzgerald's office, which has declined to comment on any aspect of the investigation. Cheney's attorney, Terrence O'Donnell, did not return phone calls for comment.

 

The Serious Implications Of President Bush's Hiring A Personal Outside Counsel For The Valerie Plame Investigation
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 04, 2004

Recently, the White House acknowledged that President Bush is talking with, and considering hiring, a non-government attorney, James E. Sharp. Sharp is being consulted, and may be retained, regarding the current grand jury investigation of the leak revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative.


(Plame is the wife of Bush critic and former ambassador Joe Wilson; I discussed the leak itself in a prior column, and then discussed further developments in the investigation in a follow-up column.)

This action by Bush is a rather stunning and extraordinary development. The President of the United States is potentially hiring a private criminal defense lawyer. Unsurprisingly, the White House is doing all it can to bury the story, providing precious little detail or context for the President's action.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bush explained his action by saying, "This is a criminal matter. It's a serious matter," but he gave no further specifics. White House officials, too, would not say exactly what prompted Bush to seek the outside advice, or whether he had been asked to appear before the grand jury.

Nonetheless, Bush's action, in itself, says a great deal. In this column, I will analyze what its implications may be.

The Valerie Plame Grand Jury Investigation

The Plame investigation took a quantum leap in December 2003, when Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself. Ashcroft's deputy appointed a special counsel, who has powers and authority tantamount to those of the attorney general himself. That means, in practice, that Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney from Chicago, does not report to the Justice Department regarding his investigation. (In this sense, Fitzgerald's position is similar to that of an Independent Counsel under the now-defunct independent counsel statute.)

Those familiar with Fitzgerald's inquiry tell me that the investigative team of attorneys is principally from his office in Chicago, and that they do not really know their way around the workings of Washington. This has resulted in an investigation that is being handled Chicago-style - not D.C.-style. That's significant because in Washington, there is more of a courtesy and protocol toward power than exists in the Windy City.

The Fitzgerald investigation has not made friends with the Washington press corps, many of whom are being subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Those journalists with whom I have spoken say they are not willing appeared before any grand jury to reveal their sources. So this issue is headed toward a showdown. And under existing law, a journalist cannot refuse to provide information to a grand jury.

Nor, based on the few existing precedents, can a sitting president refuse to give testimony to a grand jury. And that appears to be the broad, underlying reason Bush is talking with Washington attorney James Sharp.

Reasons the Plame Grand Jury May Want Bush's Testimony

Why might the grand jury wish to hear Bush's testimony? Most of the possible answers are not favorable for Bush.

There is, of course, one totally benign way to view the situation. "It is hard for me to imagine that Pat Fitzgerald is going to be going aggressively after the president," one Washington lawyer told the Los Angeles Times. "My guess is that he feels a need to conduct an interview because he needs to be in a position to say, 'I have done everything that could be done.'" The lawyer added, "If [Fitzgerald] closes the case without an indictment and has not interviewed the president, he is going to be criticized."

But from what I have learned from those who have been quizzed by the Fitzgerald investigators it seems unlikely that they are interviewing the President merely as a matter of completeness, or in order to be able to defend their actions in front of the public. Asking a President to testify - or even be interviewed - remains a serious, sensitive and rare occasion. It is not done lightly. Doing so raises separation of powers concerns that continue to worry many.

Instead, it seems the investigators are seeking to connect up with, and then speak with, persons who have links to and from the leaked information - and those persons, it seems, probably include the President. (I should stress, however, that I do not have access to grand jury testimony, and that grand jury proceedings are secret. But the facts that are properly public do allow some inference and commentary about what likely is occurring in the grand jury.)

Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so. .

If so - and if the person revealed the leaker's identity to the President, or if the President decided he preferred not to know the leaker's identity. -- then this fact could conflict with Bush's remarkably broad public statements on the issue. He has said that he did not know of "anybody in [his] administration who leaked classified information." He has also said that he wanted "to know the truth" about this leak.

If Bush is called before the grand jury, it is likely because Fitzgerald believes that he knows much more about this leak than he has stated publicly.

Perhaps Bush may have knowledge not only of the leaker, but also of efforts to make this issue go away - if indeed there have been any. It is remarkably easy to obstruct justice, and this matter has been under various phases of an investigation by the Justice Department since it was referred by the CIA last summer.

It seems very possible the leaker - or leakers, for two government sources were initially cited by columnist Robert Novak -- may have panicked, covered up his (or their) illegality, and in doing so, committed further crimes. If so, did the President hear of it? Was he willfully blind? Was he himself the victim of a cover-up by underlings? The grand jury may be interested in any or all of these possibilities.

Bush Needs An Outside Attorney To Maintain Attorney-Client Privilege

Readers may wonder, why is Bush going to an outside counsel, when numerous government attorneys are available to him - for instance, in the White House Counsel's Office?

The answer is that the President has likely been told it would be risky to talk to his White House lawyers, particularly if he knows more than he claims publicly.

Ironically, it was the fair-haired Republican stalwart Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who decimated the attorney-client privilege for government lawyers and their clients - which, to paraphrase the authority Wigmore, applies when legal advice of any kind is sought by a client from a professional legal adviser, where the advice is sought in confidence.

The reason the privilege was created was to insure open and candid discussion between a lawyer and his or her client. It traditionally applied in both civil and criminal situations for government lawyers, just as it did for non-government lawyers. It applied to written records of communications, such as attorney's notes, as well as to the communications themselves.

But Starr tried to thwart that tradition in two different cases, before two federal appeals courts. There, he contended that there should be no such privilege in criminal cases involving government lawyers.

In the first case, In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Duces Tecum, former First Lady Hillary Clinton had spoken with her private counsel in the presence of White House counsel (who had made notes of the conversation). Starr wanted the notes. Hillary Clinton claimed the privilege.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with Starr. The court held that a grand jury was entitled to the information. It also held that government officials -- even when serving as attorneys -- had a special obligation to provide incriminating information in their possession.

In the second case, In re Lindsey, Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey refused to testify about his knowledge of President Clinton's relationship to Monica Lewinsky, based on attorney-client privilege. Starr sought to compel Lindsey's testimony, and he won again.

This time, Starr persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to follow the Eighth Circuit. The court ruled that exposure of wrongdoing by government lawyers fostered democracy, as "openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government."

Based on these precedents, President Bush has almost certainly been told that the only way he can discuss his potential testimony with a lawyer is by hiring one outside the government.

What Might a Private Attorney Advise Bush to Do?

It is possible that Bush is consulting Sharp only out of an excess of caution - despite the fact that he knows nothing of the leak, or of any possible coverup of the leak. But that's not likely.

On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush's move - unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. "It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak," he told me.

What advice might Bush get from a private defense counsel? The lawyer I consulted opined that, "If he does have knowledge about the leak and does not plan to disclose it, the only good legaladvice would be to take the Fifth, rather than lie. The political fallout is a separate issue."

I raised the issue of whether the President might be able to invoke executive privilege as to this information. But the attorney I consulted - who is well versed in this area of law -- opined that "Neither 'outing' Plame, nor covering for the perpetrators would seem to fall within the scope of any executive privilege that I am aware of."

That may not stop Bush from trying to invoke executive privilege, however - or at least from talking to his attorney about the option. As I have discussed in one of my prior columns, Vice President Dick Cheney has tried to avoid invoking it in implausible circumstances - in the case that is now before the U.S .Supreme Court. Rather he claims he is beyond the need for the privilege, and simply cannot be sued.

Suffice it to say that whatever the meaning of Bush's decision to talk with private counsel about the Valerie Plame leak, the matter has taken a more ominous turn with Bush's action. It has only become more portentous because now Dick Cheney has also hired a lawyer for himself, suggesting both men may have known more than they let on. Clearly, the investigation is heading toward a culmination of some sort. And it should be interesting.