Bush breaks CIA leak silence

WASHINGTON – President Bush said Monday that he would fire anyone in his administration who had leaked the identity of a CIA officer – if the leak broke the law.

“If someone committed a crime,” Bush said speaking to reporters after a meeting with visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, “they will no longer work in my administration.”

Time reporter Matthew Cooper has said Karl Rove, Bush’s deputy chief of staff and closest political adviser, was the first person to disclose to him that an administration critic’s wife worked for the CIA. She subsequently was identified as Valerie Plame.

Several Democrats, including Sens. John Kerry of Massachusettts and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, have called for Rove’s firing.

Some Democrats have charged that Bush has shifted his position. They say he had promised to fire anyone involved in the leaking of Plame’s name in 2003 regardless of whether a law had been broken.

“President Bush backed away from his initial pledge and lowered the ethics bar,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said.

Dean and other Democrats said Bush had promised during a news conference in June 2004 to fire any aide involved in the leak. Asked by a reporter whether he would “fire anyone” involved in leaking Plame’s name, Bush replied, “Yes.”

Bush went on to add a caveat, however: “And that’s up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.” That was a reference to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into who leaked Plame’s name and whether that was a crime. It can be a violation of federal law to knowingly disclose the name of a covert CIA agent, but the law is written narrowly and is hard to break.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan cautioned reporters Monday not to “read anything into” the president’s latest comment. “I think you should look back at what the president said” in the past, McClellan said.

In September 2003, Bush said that he wanted to know the identity of any leaker, and that “if the person has violated (the) law, the person will be taken care of.”

Rove, who McClellan had previously said was not involved in Plame’s unmasking, was identified this week by Cooper as one of his sources for a story on the Time Web site in July 2003. The story revealed Plame’s connection to the CIA. Cooper says he learned of Plame’s job at the CIA from Rove and confirmed the information later with Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. Neither identified her by name, Cooper said, but rather as former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s wife.