A former White House aide said in court papers filed late Wednesday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney did not authorize him to disclose the identity of a CIA employee.
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who resigned in October after being charged with lying to federal investigators, said he was not told by Bush or Cheney to tell reporters that war critic Joseph Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA.
“Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson by President Bush, Vice President Cheney or anyone else,” Libby’s lawyers wrote.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald does not dispute the assertion, though some Democrats seized on a court filing by Fitzgerald last week as tantamount to Bush leaking the identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame.
“Look, the idea that the president of the United States leaks information that reveals the name of a CIA agent and blows her cover, meaning that there’s no possibility that she could work undercover again — what the heck do you think that says to every other agent in the field?” Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said on HBO last week.
Fitzgerald began his probe nearly three years ago in response to accusations by Wilson that White House officials blew his wife’s cover. No one has been charged with leaking the name.
The only person charged at all in the probe so far is Libby, who is accused of lying to investigators about how he learned that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. Libby said he learned it from reporters, while Fitzgerald contends that Libby learned it from other government officials.
The case is scheduled to go to trial next year, but lawyers for the two sides are already arguing over documents. Libby’s lawyers argued on Wednesday that Fitzgerald has refused to turn over most of the 200,000 pages of documents the prosecution has amassed.
Fitzgerald counters that he has already turned over 12,300 pages of documents, some of which are classified, and will soon turn over 1,400 additional pages of handwritten notes from Cheney’s office.
But that amounts to “less than 10 percent of the government’s file,” Libby’s lawyers argued in the documents filed at U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
“On numbers alone, the government’s document production has been exceptionally meager,” they said in Wednesday’s filing. “And it appears even more paltry and insufficient in light of all of the complicated factual issues in this case.”
