Bush Shared Intel To 'See The Truth'
Earlier, GOP Senator Asks For Honesty Regarding White House Role
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Play CBS Video Video White House Defends 'Leak' Reporters pressed administration officials on "Scooter" Libby's allegation that President Bush authorized leaking classified information to build support for the Iraq war. Jim Axelrod has more.
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Video Libby: Bush Cleared Intel Leak President Bush has long claimed to despise leaks and leakers, but now he is accused of authorizing a leak of classified intelligence on Iraq. Gloria Borger has more.
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President Bush participates in a question and answer session after delivering remarks on the global war on terror at the John Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington Monday, April 10, 2006. (AP)
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Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., is pressuring the White House to clarify its involvement in the CIA leak case. (AP)
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Lewis "Scooter" Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying to the grand jury and investigators about what he told reporters about CIA officer Valerie Plame. (AP)
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Interactive The Leak People and events surrounding the leak of a CIA officer's name.
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Interactive Bush Presidency The president's agenda, plus facts, figures, major events and key personalities.
The investigation is looking into whether Plame's identify was disclosed to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, an Iraq war critic. Wilson had accused the administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat who ran against Bush for president in 2004, said it was wrong for Bush to declassify information selectively "in order to buttress phony arguments to go to war" and to attack people politically.
"This was not a declassification in order to really educate America. This was a declassification in order to mislead America," Kerry said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "I think it's a disgrace."
Wilson said Sunday that Mr. Bush and Cheney should release transcripts of their interviews with Fitzgerald.
"It seems to me that first and foremost, the White House needs to come clean on this matter," Wilson said on ABC's "This Week." "My own view of this is that the White House owes the American people and particularly our service people who have been sent into war, an apology for having misrepresented the facts."
The lawyer knowledgeable about the case said Mr. Bush instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details about disseminating the intelligence to him. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case for the White House, said Cheney chose Libby and communicated the president's wishes to his then-top aide.
"I don't think there's any evidence that the president told the vice president to go leak information to the press," said Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz.
Kyl said on CNN's "Late Edition" that a better way for the administration to have tried to counter Wilson's claims in a New York Times op-ed would have been to "have all of the press be given" the declassified intelligence material.
It is not known when the conversation between Mr. Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.
"There has to be a detailed explanation as to precisely what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him and an explanation by the president as to what he said," Specter said.
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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