WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff testified that he was authorized by President Bush, through Cheney, in July 2003 to disclose key portions of what until then was a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to a new court filing.
The testimony by the former official, I. Lewis Libby Jr., cited in a court filing by the government made late Wednesday, provides the first indication that Bush, who has long assailed leaks of secret information as a threat to national security, may have played a direct role in authorizing the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq.
The disclosure occurred at a moment when the White House was trying to defend itself against charges that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
The president has the authority to declassify information, and Libby indicated in his grand jury testimony that he believed Bush's instructions — which prosecutors said Libby regarded as "unique in his recollection" — gave him legal cover to talk with a reporter about the intelligence.
Among the key judgments in the report, called a National Intelligence Estimate, was that Saddam Hussein was probably seeking fuel for nuclear weapons.
Libby did not assert in his testimony, first reported on the Web site of The New York Sun, that Bush or Cheney had authorized him to reveal the name of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Wilson. Libby is scheduled to go on trial next year on perjury and obstruction charges connected to the disclosure of Wilson's name.
The White House refused to discuss Libby's account, or say whether it differed with Bush or Cheney's recollections of events, which the two men described in interviews with prosecutors. "We're not commenting on an ongoing legal proceeding," said Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary.
Democrats seized on the disclosure and demanded that Bush — who has said he was determined to get to the bottom of the leak case — now disclose his role. "In light of today's shocking revelation, President Bush must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information," said the Democratic leader, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Rep. Jane Harmaj, D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said: "If the disclosure is true, it's breathtaking. The president is revealed as the leaker in chief."
Libby discussed some of the conclusions of the intelligence report with Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, in a meeting on July 8, 2003, the court documents say.
The previous day, the White House, for the first time, had publicly admitted that Bush's statement in the State of the Union address earlier that year, alleging Saddam had sought uranium in Africa, should not have been included in the speech.
A little more than a week later, under continuing pressure, the White House published a declassified version of the executive summary of the estimate, in an effort to make the case that Bush's statement had been justified by the intelligence community's best judgment at the time.
The disclosure on Wednesday night was part of the legal maneuvering over documents Libby has demanded from the government to make his defense. But the political impact of the disclosure could be more significant than the legal impact. Libby's account suggests that part of his defense will be to argue that any information he leaked was on the instructions of his two superiors, Cheney and Bush.
The court filing said that Libby testified that the "vice president advised defendant that the president had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE." The prosecutors said that Libby testified that he recalled "getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approvAl" and that those events "were unique in his recollection."
The leak was intended, the court papers suggested, as a rebuttal to an Op-Ed article published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former U.S. ambassador and the husband of Valerie Wilson. Joseph Wilson wrote that he traveled to Africa in 2002 after Cheney raised questions about possible nuclear purchases by Iraq. Joseph Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful" Iraq had sought nuclear fuel from Niger.
At Cheney's office, the Op-Ed article was viewed "as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," according to the court papers field by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
The filing was intended to limit the number of documents that the"government has to turn over to Libby and his defense team. By Libby's account to the grand jury, the presidential authorization to disclose selective parts of the intelligence estimate was made in advance of a meeting on July 8, 2003, between Libby and Miller. Libby brought a brief abstract of the NIE's key judgments to the meeting with Miller.
Libby testified, the prosecutors said, that he was "specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occashon because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out." The court filing said that Libby testified tiat he was supposed to tell Miller, among other things, that "a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." Libby, the prosecutors said, testified that the meeting with Miller was the "only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the president's authorization that it be disclosed."