The Leaker in Chief?

George W. Bush likes to be seen as a man who dwells above the pettiness of political warfare. He has said he doesn't read the newspapers and shrugs off media criticism as carping of the chattering classes. Especially since 9/11, he has said that he looks to a higher power for guidance. He once threatened to stop sharing information with Capitol Hill if lawmakers didn't put a stop to leaking. "There are too many leaks of classified information," he told reporters in September 2003, "and if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."

Last week a video clip of Bush making that statement became cable-TV wallpaper.

Bush, it appeared, was not above the old leaking game after all. The president who, as a younger man, once played the role of loyalty enforcer in his father's White House had not forgotten how to play hardball. According to a filing from the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak investigation, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, who has been indicted for lying in the case, told a grand jury that President Bush specifically authorized him to leak from an intelligence document on WMD in Iraq. The leak, according to Libby's testimony, was intended to rebut the allegations of an administration critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was disputing administration claims that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger.

Democrats jumped on the news, calling Bush a hypocrite. Republicans on Capitol Hill worried that the attacks on Bush's integrity would further sink his poll ratings and hurt the GOP in November. "Leaker in chief is something that could stick," said a senior GOP aide, who declined to be named for fear of angering the president. The White House has not denied the central thrust of Libby's claim. But by late last weekend, the White House was scrambling to distance Bush from the leak, putting out the word that the president had not been involved in tactical decisions--like who should leak, or picking which reporter to leak to. The White House may just be spinning--or the reaction could portend a rift between Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who seemed to be giving Libby his marching orders.

Legally, Bush did nothing wrong. The president can declassify a document any time he wants. Indeed, a sanitized version of the document in question--a National Intelligence Estimate compiled by the CIA and other agencies--was formally declassified and made public only 10 days after some of its contents were leaked by Libby to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in July 2003. But the administration was unquestionably playing games with reporters, whether or not the president was directly involved.

For instance, on July 11, seven days before key portions of the NIE were released, reporters badgered the then national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice to allow them to see some of the NIE, which had been used by the administration to make the case for war with Congress. "We don't want to try to get into kind of selective declassification," said Rice, though she added, "We're looking at what can be made available."