Bush Authorized Leaks of Classified Information in the Revealing of a CIA Agent’s Identity

Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff testified under oath that Cheney and President Bush told him to leak information contained in a classified document to reporter Judith Miller. We now know that both Libby and President Bush’s assistant Chief of Staff Karl Rove leaked classified information about the identity of an undercover CIA agent endangering her life and ending her career of keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of Iran.

Before the 2004 election President Bush said that if anyone in the White House was involved they would be fired. He also told America through his press secretary Scott McClellan that neither Rove nor Libby was involved in this.

“The President has set high standards, the highest of standards, for people in his administration. If anyone in this administration was involved in it [leaking classified information to the press especially in regards to the CIA outing], they would no longer be in this administration.”
- White House press secretary Scott McClellan Sept. 29, 2003

President Bush promised Americans that he would get to the bottom of the leak that revealed the identity of a CIA agent. It turns out that he is the bottom. The very bottom—no one lower, in fact.

"I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information [about the leaking of classified information] inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would."

- President George W. Bush, Sept. 30, 2003

Now Bush claims that he leaked part of the National Intelligence Estimate (a part that proved to be false and did not leak the part that contradicted the part he did leak) was because he wanted the American people to know the truth. Really? Then why leak it as an anonymous source to a single reporter? Why not hold a press conference and declare it to the world? Because he knew the information was not true and didn’t want it traceable to him. Only because Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, has been indicted for perjury when he testified to a Grand Jury and lying to the FBI about revealing a CIA agent’s identity as political payback has this gotten out.