Libby claims Cheney advised leak

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

Cheney was one of the “superiors” I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby said had authorized him to make the disclosures, according to sources familiar with the investigation into Libby’s discussions with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame. But it is unclear whether Cheney instructed his former top aide to release classified information, because parts of the National Intelligence Estimate were previously declassified.

The disclosure in a legal document written by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald demonstrates one way in which Cheney was involved in responding to public allegations by Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the administration had exaggerated questionable intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

In a letter written in January and released in court papers filed by Libby’s defense Monday, Fitzgerald wrote that Libby testified that his “superiors” authorized him to disclose information from the National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003. The National Journal first reported on its Web site Thursday that Cheney had provided the authorization.

The intelligence estimate is a classified report prepared by intelligence officers for high-level government officials, and some parts are regularly declassified in a summary and available to the public.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment on Cheney’s role in Libby’s discussions of the intelligence estimate.

Libby was indicted in October on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the course of the investigation. Fitzgerald has been trying to determine since January 2004 whether administration officials knowingly disclosed Plame’s identity to reporters to discredit Wilson’s allegations, a possible violation of law. Plame’s name first appeared in a syndicated column by Robert Novak in July 2003, eight days after her husband publicly accused the administration of relying on questionable information about Iraq’s weapons program to justify the war.