White House defense: That's no leak

WASHINGTON — When is a leak not a leak?

When the president says it's OK and the information doesn't harm national security, according to President Bush's spokesman.

That's how the White House on Friday sought to defuse the controversy over testimony by a former top aide who said Bush personally authorized him to divulge once-classified intelligence as part of a campaign to rebut Iraq-war critics in July 2003.

Spokesman Scott McClellan never challenged the account of Bush's actions by Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who testified to a grand jury two years ago and was later indicted.

McClellan refused to comment directly on Libby's account. But McClellan said Bush had the right as commander in chief to declassify parts of a National Intelligence Estimate that alluded to Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

Few legal scholars dispute Bush's authority to do so.

That's not a "leak," McClellan insisted, but merely providing information to explain Bush's prewar decision-making, which was coming under attack after no such weapons were found.

McClellan drew a sharp distinction between providing that information and leaking classified secrets that could harm U.S. national security.

"There is a difference between providing declassified information to the public when it's in the public interest, and leaking classified information that involves sensitive national intelligence," McClellan said.

But Democrats and some open-government advocates cried foul, saying Bush's decision smacked of abusing his presidential authority and calling on him to give a full account of his actions.

Bush's "selective declassification of highly sensitive intelligence for political purposes is wrong," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

McClellan also said he couldn't explain why he told reporters July 18, 2003, that the prewar intelligence was being declassified for the first time while now saying Bush himself had the right to declassify such information at least 10 days earlier, as reflected in Libby's account.

In that account, Libby said he released the information to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003.

McClellan tried to clarify his 2003 remarks, saying that what he meant on July 18 when he said the material had been declassified that day was that it was "officially released" that day.

"I think that's what I was referring to at the time," he said.

Libby also leaked information from the National Intelligence Estimate to Bob Woodward of The Washington Post before the date the White House said it was officially declassified, July 8, 2003.

In sworn testimony, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald that Libby told him June 27, 2003, about the CIA estimate and an Iraqi effort to obtain yellowcake uranium in of Niger, according to a statement Woodward released Nov. 14, 2005.

In an interview, Woodward said his notes, which were not released publicly but were shown to Fitzgerald, included Libby using the word "vigorous" to describe the Iraqi effort. Libby used similar language when he provided the information to Miller.

The precise status of the information at the time Libby provided it to Woodward is unclear because of conflicting accounts of the declassification process provided by Libby and McClellan.

Fitzgerald's court filing does not provide the date Bush and Cheney said they authorized Libby's disclosures.

Bush, Cheney and other top officials have reacted angrily at unauthorized leaks, such as the exposure of a domestic-surveillance program and secret CIA prisons, both of which are now the subject of far-reaching investigations.

Libby is accused of obstruction of justice and perjury in an investigation designed to discover who leaked then-CIA undercover officer Valerie Plame's identity.

Her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, emerged as a key critic of Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, saying the president knowingly gave the nation information about Iraq's alleged nuclear program that U.S. intelligence services knew was untrue.

Fitzgerald alleged that Plame's identity was leaked because an angry White House was seeking to discredit Plame's husband, Wilson.

Meanwhile, a Libby attorney, William Jeffress, said Friday that Libby's involvement in authorized disclosures of sensitive intelligence information does not undermine his contention that he innocently forgot about conversations he may have had with reporters regarding Plame.

The leak revelations come at an already troubled time for Bush, who rode to office in 2000 pledging to end word-parsing such as asking the meaning of the word "is," as former President Clinton did during his Monica Lewinsky testimony.

A new Associated Press poll Friday put Bush at his lowest approval rating yet — 36 percent — and political analysts say Libby's statements cut to the core of Bush's political persona as a straight-talker.

"Arguing over what's a good leak or a bad leak, it sounds as though the administration is hiding something," analyst Stu Rothenberg said. "For many people, it'll look hypocritical and it'll look as though they're splitting hairs."

Material from The Washington Post, Knight Ridder Newspapers and Reuters is included in this report.