Reply #167: Libby testifies Bush approved disclosure of Plame

[JohnWxy]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-040606libby_lat,0,3687566.story?coll=la-home-headlines



By Richard Schmitt, Times Staff Writer
1:49 PM PDT, April 6, 2006


WASHINGTON -- President Bush personally authorized leaking long-classified information to a reporter in the summer of 2003 to buttress administration claims, now discredited, that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction for Iraq, according to a court filing by prosecutors in the case against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted in October on charges that he lied to investigators about his role in the unmasking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

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Court papers filed by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald late Wednesday said that before Libby's indictment, he told a federal grand jury investigating the leak that Cheney told him to pass on information about a secret National Intelligence Estimate to the press and that Bush had authorized the disclosure, according to the court papers.