McClellan Testifies About C.I.A. Leak, Flip-Flops

Former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan testified before the House Judiciary Committee today about the administration's role in leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the press in 2003. In McClellan's new book, ''What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception,''  he says he was instructed to tell what turned out to be lies regarding the role some senior White House officials played in the leak.

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Background

Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson. An investigation started in 2005 showed that high ranking members of the Bush administration intentionally leaked Plame's role in the CIA, probably as retribution for an op-ed piece Wilson wrote for The New York Times in July, 2003. Wilson's editorial criticized Bush's reasoning for rushing to war and disputed the administration's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the country of Niger.

White House Chief of Staff Andy Card told McClellan that the president and vice president wanted him to publicly deny that Cheney's Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had any involvement in the affair. It later turned out that both Libby and former presidential adviser Karl Rove had leaked Plame's name to reporters.

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The Fallout

Plame told Congress last year that the leak of her identity as a covert operative "jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents." The leak enabled the identification of Plame as an employee of the CIA front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, and in doing so enabled the identification of other CIA agents who were "employed" there. Intelligence services in nations she had visited were also able to go back and check where she had been and to whom she had spoken.

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End Run Around the Law

Under the National Security Act of 1947 and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, disclosing the identify of a covert agent is punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to ten years. These laws apply to almost all of us.

In this case, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are immune to these laws because they both have the authority to decide what information is classified and declassified. They also have the ability to authorize the disclosure of classified information.

Libby testified that he had authorization from Vice President Cheney to release Valerie Plame's identity. This means that he was given permission to out a covert CIA operative for political reasons, and no laws were broken in the process.

Libby could not be charged for leaking classified information; he was instead convicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges, and his sentence was later commuted by President Bush so he would not have to serve any jail time. Karl Rove, who also talked with two reporters about Plame, was never charged.

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Today's Flip-Flop

As reported by the New York Times, McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know if a crime was committed and does not believe that Bush knew about or directed the leak. When asked about Cheney, he replied: ''I do not know. There's a lot of suspicion there.''

Oddly, this directly contradicts an assertion McClellan made on the Today Show three weeks ago. From that interview:

McClellan: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.

Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?

McClellan: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enabled Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that's what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, were the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said "yeah, I did." And I was kinda taken aback.

You can hear this quote exactly five minutes into the interview:

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So, was he telling the truth then or now? Perhaps a more relevant question would be: "Will it really make a difference?"

Comments

[JollyRoger]

Interesting. I'd love to hear Scott explain this. It is hard to imagine this being some kind of a miscommunication on his part, or a misunderstanding.

[Mouthful of Politics]

Agreed. He must have gone into the hearing with the intention of feigning ignorance about this. I do hope someone from the mainstream media asks him to explain the discrepancy.