WASHINGTON - President Bush has consulted a private attorney in case he is interviewed or forced to testify about who may have leaked the name of a covert CIA operative to the media last summer, the White House said Wednesday. advertisement
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There was no indication that Bush is a target of the grand jury investigation, but the president has decided that in the event he needs an attorney’s advice, “he would retain him,” said Claire Buchan, a spokeswoman for the White House.“The president has said that everyone should cooperate in this matter and that would include himself,” said Buchan, who confirmed a report by CBS News identifying the lawyer as Jim Sharp. Buchan deflected questions about whether Bush had been asked to appear before the grand jury, which is investigating who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media. NBC News first reported in September that the CIA had requested an investigation. Democrats blast Bush
Democrats seized on the news to criticize the president. “It speaks for itself that the president initially claimed he wanted to get to the bottom of this, but now he’s suddenly retained a lawyer,” said Jano Cabrera, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. “Bush shouldn’t drag the country through grand juries and legal maneuvering. President Bush should come forward with what he knows and come clean with the American people.” Plame’s name first surfaced in July in a column written by commentator Robert Novak, who said his information came from administration sources. Disclosure of an undercover officer’s identity can be a federal crime. The grand jury has heard from witnesses and combed through thousands of pages of documents turned over by the White House, but it has returned no indictments. The probe is being handled by Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed after Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped aside from the case because of his political ties to the White House. Without a breakthrough from the documents or a cooperating witness, prosecutors may be forced to try to identify the leaker through Novak or other reporters. NBC News has confirmed that Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert, the host of “Meet the Press,” has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury. Time magazine said reporter Matthew Cooper was also subpoenaed. However, journalists pressed by the prosecution could assert a First Amendment privilege to protect their sources. Grand jury casts wide net
At the request of the CIA, Wilson investigated the allegations that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger and reported that the claim was inaccurate. After Bush repeated the allegation in his 2003 State of the Union address as one of the justifications for going to war, Wilson wrote an editorial column in The New York Times accusing the president of operating under false pretenses. The grand jury, which was convened after MSNBC.com and NBC News reported in September that the CIA had requested a criminal investigation of the leak, has also issued subpoenas for records of telephone calls from Air Force One during the week before Novak published Plame’s name. Wilson identified Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Elliott Abrams, a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council, as the possible leakers in a book he published earlier this year. He has also accused Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, of having known about and encouraging the campaign to discredit him. White House press secretary Scott McClellan has said that his conversations with Rove, Libby and Abrams ruled out their involvement. NBC News is an arm of the NBC television network. MSNBC.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal. NBC’s David Gregory, MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. | MORE FROM CRIME & PUNISHMENT |
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