News n Notes from the Web

Bush, Cheney 'directed campaign against Iraq war critics'
07/04/2006 - 21:15:01
src: http://breakingnews.iol.ie

The White House today declined to challenge assertions that President George Bush authorised the leaks of intelligence information to counter US administration critics on Iraq. But Bush’s spokesman, Scott McClellan, appeared to draw a distinction about Bush’s often-stated opposition to leaks.

“There is a difference between providing declassified information to the public when it’s in the public interest and leaking classified information that involved sensitive national intelligence regarding our security,” he said.

Court papers filed by the prosecutor in the CIA leak case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby said Bush authorised Libby to disclose information from a classified pre-war intelligence report. The court papers say Libby’s boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, advised him that thePresident had authorised Libby to leak the information to the press in striking back at administration critic Joseph Wilson. McClellan volunteered that the administration declassified information from the intelligence report – the National Intelligence Estimate – and released it to the public on July 18, 2003. But he refused to say when the information was actually declassified.

On July 18, 2003, McClellan said the information had been declassified that day. “It was officially declassified today,” he told reporters in a briefing in Dallas, Texas.
At the White House today, McClellan interpreted his own remarks to mean that the informaton had been offically releasedto the public. The date could be significant because Libby discussed the information with a reporter 10 days earlier, on July 8 of that year.

Yesterday, disclosure of official authorisation for Libby’s leaks to reporters brought strong criticism from administration political enemies, but little likelihood that their demands for explanations will be met. Senator John Kerry, citing Bush’s call two years ago to find the person who leaked the CIA identity of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, said the latest disclosures meant the President needed to go no further than a mirror. In his court filing, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asserted that “the President was unaware of the role” that Libby “had in fact played in disclosing” Plame’s CIA status. The prosecutor gave no such assurance, though, regarding Cheney.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said that “in light of today’s shocking revlation, President Bush must fully discose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information. The American people must know the truth.” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the President has the “inherent authority to decide who should have classified information”. The White House declined to comment, citing the ongoing criminal probe into the leak of Plame’s identity. In July 2003, Wilson’s accusation that the Bush administration had twisted prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat “was viewed in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President, and the President”, Fitzgerald’s court papers stated. Part of the counter-attack was a meeting on July 8, 2003 with New York Times reporter Judith Miller at which Libby discussed the contents of a then-classified CIA report that seemed to undercut what Wilson was saying in public.

Separately, Libby said he understood he also was to tell Miller that pre-war intelligence assessments had been that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium, the prosecutor stated. In the run-up to the war, Cheney had insisted Iraq was trying to build a nuclear bomb. The conclusion on uranium was contained in a National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus document of the US intelligence community. Libby’s statements came in grand jury testimony before he was charged with five counts of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in the Plame probe. Libby at first told the Vice President he could not have the July 8, 2003, conversation with Miller because of the classified nature of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, Fitzgerald said.

Libby testified to the grand jury ”that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorised defendan to disclose the relevant portions” of the NIE. After Wilson began attacking the administration, Cheney had a conversation with Libby, expressing concerns on whethr a CIA-sponsored trip to the African nation of Niger by Wilson “was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr Wilson’s wife”, Fitzgerald wrote. The suggestion that Plame sent her husband on the Africa trip had widespread circulation among White House loyalists. Wilson said he had conclude on his trip that it was highly doubtful Niger had sold uranium yellowcake to Iraq. The prosecutor’s court papers offer a glimpse inside the White House when the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation of the Plame leak in September 2003.

Libby ”implored White House officials” to issue a statement saying he had not been involved in revealing Plame’s identity, and that when his initial efforts met with no success, he “sought the assistance of the vice president in having his name cleared,” the prosecutor stated. The White House eventually said neither Libby nor Karl Rove had been involved in the leak. Rove remains under criminal investigation.
***

President Bush's Comments on Leaks
By The Associated Press - The Associated Press - Friday, April 7, 2006; 3:51 PM
-- Comments by President Bush on leaks of classified information:
"There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch. There's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of." _ Sept. 30, 2003.
---
"I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information. As you know, I've been outspoken on leaks. And whether they happened in the White House, or happened in the administration, or happened on Capitol Hill, it is a _ they can be very damaging." _ Oct. 28, 2003.
---
"I want to know the truth, and I'm willing to cooperate myself." _ June 3, 2004
---
Q: "Given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney's discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent's name?"
Bush: "That's up to. ..."
Q: "And do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?"
Bush: "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts." _ June 10, 2004.
---
"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." _ July 18, 2005.
---
"My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy." _ On disclosure of the warrantless surveillance program, Dec. 19, 2005.
---
"And the fact that somebody leaked this program causes great harm to the United States. There's an enemy out there. They read newspapers, they listen to what you write, they listen to what you put on the air, and they react." _ On the surveillance program, Jan. 1, 2006.
***

France Becoming a Tale of Divided Society
France Increasingly Divided Between Coddled Elite and a Nation Angry and Adrift

By ANGELA CHARLTON-The Associated Press

PARIS - While angry students pounded drums and pleaded for protection, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin sipped vintage champagne at a lunch with members of his government. Critics say the incident last week illustrates a disconnect between France's decision-making elite coddled, refined and resting on the laurels of the country's past glory and the people they govern, especially jobless youths who are taking to the streets and face an uncertain future. Rioting by immigrant youths last fall and now anger over a new jobs law reflect a divided society increasingly adrift. "When we look at the government, we can't help but think there is no future in France," said Axel Cohen, a 16-year-old high school student brandishing an irreverent placard at a massive march in downtown Paris Tuesday. That disillusionment, he said, pushed him to protest.

For many, the dilemma runs deeper than the disputed job law that makes it easier to fire young workers and that has brought more than 1 million people to the streets, stoked scattered skirmishes with police and mired the country in crisis. "France's real problem is a gap between the government and the young people," said Cohen. President Jacques Chirac was born into wealth, attended the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the elite training ground for the French political class, and married the niece of a presidential aide. He has been a feature of French politics for four decades, but is largely a spent force entering his last year in power before elections in 2007.

Villepin is the son of a senator, attended the same school and rose to power not through the ballot box but largely thanks to Chirac's tutelage. Champagne is a regular feature at Villepin's meals at the Matignon palace that houses his offices though not always dating back to 1940, as the bottle dusted off for the lunch with his ministers at the height of the current crisis last week, according to French daily Le Figaro. French bloggers seized on the anecdote, and lambasted him for so blatantly enjoying the perks of power while the country was in crisis. Many of the youths marching in recent weeks fear they have few prospects in a sluggish economy with the highest youth unemployment rates in western Europe. The government says the new law will help pull them out of the cycle of temporary jobs and the unemployment line, but protesters say it will only make solid, long-term jobs even harder to attain. "The discontent is based on a system that hasn't delivered for many years, particularly in youth unemployment," said Hugo Brady of the Center for European Reform. Chirac "has failed to make a convincing case for reform," Brady added.

The divide between the ruling class and French reality has been widening for years. It became impossible to ignore when voters rejected the European Union constitution that Chirac championed in a referendum last year. The vote was as much a swipe at France's elite as at the European project. Chirac gravely misread the mood of the country, banking on the mistaken belief that the French would not turn their backs on an EU they helped found. Another reminder surfaced last fall, when young rioters most poor, unemployed and from immigrant backgrounds rampaged through poor neighborhoods for three weeks, releasing pent-up anger at a system that has left them by the wayside. Protesters over the jobs law are as upset by how Chirac and his government have handled the crisis as by the legislation that sparked it. As they have done with unpopular reforms over the past two decades, French leaders pushed this one through without explaining it first to the people it would affect. Villepin strong-armed it through parliament. Protests mounted, and Chirac signed it anyway. He offered modifications based on critics' concerns but opponents called them too little, too late. "We are sick and tired, because we feel like we are not being listened to," said Aurelien Gillet, a 23-year-old graduate student at the Paris march.

On Wednesday, France's biggest trade unions set a 10-day deadline for the government to revoke the law, threatening more protests and strikes if it doesn't. Union leaders began three days of talks with top lawmakers from Chirac's ruling party in hopes of ending the standoff. Associated Press writer Jenny Barchfield contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures