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Bush Again Vows to Act if Aides Are Guilty of Leaks

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Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday that he would fire any member of his administration who was found to have broken the law in revealing information about a covert CIA operative.

“I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration,” Bush said at a news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Bush’s statement was the latest iteration of his stance on the conditions under which he would dismiss a member of his staff for any role in leaking the CIA operative’s identity.

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Federal prosecutors are investigating how the identity of the undercover operative, Valerie Plame, made its way into the news media in July 2003, and whether anyone in the Bush administration leaked information about her in violation of a federal law that protects covert agents’ identities.

Prosecutors have obtained testimony from Bush’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove, and other administration officials.

By saying Monday that committing a crime would trigger dismissal, Bush appeared to be setting a narrower standard than he did in a statement made on June 10, 2004. On that day, Bush answered “yes” when he was asked: “Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found” to have leaked the CIA operative’s name?

Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, said Sept. 29, 2003: “The president...has made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.”

Democrats said Bush, with his statement Monday, had lowered the ethical standards for working at the White House.

“The standard for holding a high position in the White House should not simply be that you didn’t break the law,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, in a written statement, accused Bush of having “lowered the ethics bar.”

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But Bush has said in the past that an aide would be fired if found to have broken a law, language similar to his statement Monday.

“There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington,” Bush said on Sept. 30, 2003. “There’s leaks at the executive branch; there’s leaks in the legislative branch. There’s just too many leaks. And if there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”

On Monday, McClellan rejected the idea that Bush had changed his stance on what would prompt him to fire a staff member.

“I think that the president was stating what is obvious when it comes to people who work in the administration: that if someone commits a crime, they’re not going to be working any longer in this administration,” McClellan told reporters two hours after Bush’s news conference. “I would not read anything into it more than what the president said.”

One practical effect of Bush’s stance, as it was stated Monday, could be to prolong the service of any aide who eventually was found to have broken the law. The leak investigation is ongoing, and any conviction might be months or years away. A 1982 federal law makes it a crime to intentionally disclose the identity of a covert agent to someone not authorized to receive such information.

On Monday, Bush again urged people to reserve judgment until special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald completed his work on the case.

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“I think it’s best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so as well,” Bush said.

McClellan was asked why the president did not demand answers about the leak from Rove and other White House staff members.

“I’ll tell you why,” McClellan said, “because there’s an investigation that is continuing at this point, and the appropriate people to handle these issues are the ones who are overseeing that investigation.”

Rove has drawn attention because his lawyer has acknowledged that Rove talked to a Time magazine reporter about Plame -- without using her name -- before Plame’s name surfaced in the magazine. A person familiar with the investigation has said that Rove told prosecutors he also talked with columnist Robert Novak before Novak used Plame’s name in his column.

Rove’s lawyer has said the White House advisor did not leak the name to anyone and that he is not a target of the investigation.

Many legal experts believe it is unlikely that any administration official would be prosecuted in the Plame case under the law that protects covert agents.

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Although it is a violation of federal law to intentionally disclose the identity of a covert intelligence agent, Rove’s position -- that he learned Plame’s identity through journalists -- appears to undercut any prosecution of him for that offense, which requires that the accused have knowledge of the agent’s protected status, legal experts said.

On Monday, a person familiar with the investigation confirmed a report in the latest issue of Newsweek magazine that, when first interviewed by the FBI about the leak, Rove did not mention a conversation he had about Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in the days before Plame’s name surfaced in the news media.

The source said Rove later mentioned the conversation to investigators, who did not appear to be aware of it when Rove made the revelation.

It is not known whether Rove initially mentioned a conversation he had with Novak days before Novak published his column unmasking Plame.

Failing to disclose material facts to investigators can, under some circumstances, be a violation of federal law.

It is not known what Rove was asked by investigators and how he responded in the early days of the investigation, and legal experts said the specific circumstances of the questioning were crucial in determining whether a crime had been committed.

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“It really depends on the questions asked, how probing the questions were and how categorical the responses were,” said Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., a former federal prosecutor who is a defense lawyer in Philadelphia. In general, Hockeimer said, it is difficult to prosecute individuals for failing to disclose information to investigators, unless their later statements contradict earlier statements that seemed to be made emphatically.

Robert Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, said of his client: “In both interviews and grand jury appearances, he cooperated fully and completely and truthfully, and there has never been any suggestion from anyone associated with Fitzgerald’s office that he was anything other than candid and cooperative.”

Critics of the Bush administration have said they believe Plame’s name was passed to reporters as retribution against her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

In a July 6, 2003, opinion article in the New York Times, Wilson challenged the administration’s contention that Iraq had tried to obtain nuclear materials in Niger. The administration had cited Iraq’s activities in Niger as part of its case for going to war against Iraq.

According to people familiar with the investigation, prosecutors have been told that as a result of the opinion piece, top White House aides quickly set out to discredit Wilson, in part by focusing on the fact that his wife was a CIA officer who played a role in the decision to send him to Niger.

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