Libby: Bosses ordered leak about Iraq WMDs

From an article written by Carol D. Leonnig in the Washington Post, we have this to chew on. Ex-Cheney aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby has testified that Vice-President Dick Cheney was one of the “superiors” behind the disclosures that led to the “outing” of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.

The disclosure in a legal document written by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald shows one way in which Vice-President Cheney was involved in responding to public allegations by Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the administration had exaggerated questionable intelligence to justify war with Iraq.

Libby was indicted in October on charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements in the course of the investigation.

Fitzgerald has been trying to determine since January 2004 whether administration officials knowingly disclosed Plame's identity to reporters to discredit Wilson's allegations, a possible violation of law. Plame's name first appeared in a syndicated column by Robert Novak in July 2003, eight days after her husband publicly accused the administration of relying on questionable information about Iraq's weapons program to justify the war.

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