WASHINGTON, July 21 - At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative's identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.
The two issues had become inextricably linked because Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of the unmasked C.I.A. officer, had questioned Mr. Bush's assertion, prompting a damage-control effort by the White House that included challenging Mr. Wilson's standing and his credentials. A federal grand jury investigation is under way by a special counsel to determine whether someone illegally leaked the officer's identity and possibly into whether perjury or obstruction of justice occurred during the inquiry.
People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.
They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.
At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an Op-Ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Mr. Bush's speech.
Karl Rove and Lewis Libby were working together to respond to the criticisms on Bush's arguments for going to war with Iraq. Those two were working to contain the fallout caused by Wilson's Op-Ed article in the New York Times. Even more interesting is that these two political operatives were working with both CIA director George Tenet and deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley--who would have had access to classified material regarding Wilson's wife Valerie Plame. This whole scheme of having the White House political machine working with intelligence and national security offices in what is essentially a White House public relations campaign raises a lot of questions and suspicions. Was classified material regarding Valerie Plame shared between Hadley, Rove and Libby? And if so, when? The White House political machine and the national security offices are two operations that run separately. The reason you keep these two offices separate is to protect the long term intelligence operations and national security assets of the United States from being exploited, abused, or destroyed by a White House political machine for short-term political gains.
Also in the same Times story is the special prosecutor's interest in a particular memo. According to the Times:
Lawyers with clients in the case said Mr. Fitzgerald and his investigators have shown interest in a classified State Department memo that was provided to Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, as he left for Africa on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and his top aides on July 7, 2003, a day after Mr. Wilson made his accusations public.
The memorandum identified Ms. Wilson by name and described her as having a role in her husband's selection for the mission to Niger. A government official said the paragraph in the memorandum identifying Ms. Wilson was preceded by the letter S in brackets, a designation meaning that contents of the paragraph were classified secret. The designation was first reported on Thursday by The Washington Post.
The investigators have been trying to determine who else within the administration might have seen the memo or learned of its contents.
Here is the reason why you don't combine the White House political machine with the national security offices for particular tasks. Classified information gets leaked between the two offices. Who was on Air Force One when that memo was passed around? Who had seen that memo?
Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.
Mr. Fleischer's role has been scrutinized by investigators, in part because his telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson's article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson's identity.
In his column, Mr. Novak referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, which she had used when first employed by the C.I.A. Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he did not return Mr. Novak's call, a person familiar with the testimony said.
So Fleischer claims he never saw the memo, however his telephone log says he made a call to Novak after the Wilson article appeared? What did Fleischer say to Novak in that call? The Times also reports that Karl Rove claims he never saw the memo, and yet Rove was also one of the sources for both Novak and Cooper's articles. Rove and Libby were working together in damage control to contain the criticisms against Bush's arguments for going to war in Iraq. They were working with both Tenet and Hadley in this PR work--and Hadley was consulting with Tenet on the issue. There are so many holes where this information could have been leaked between the two offices. And once Valerie Plame's name and cover got into the White House political machine, that information became too tempting to use to destroy Joe Wilson's reputation for short-term political gains at the expense of U.S. long term national security.
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