Breaking: Post reporter reveals Ari Fleischer as leak source

Editor's note: I am moving over to post at the other blog. Also see new articles below .

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Pincus Reveals Fleischer As Leak Source

Post Reporter Identifies Former White House Spokesman As Source for CIA Story

By MATT APUZZO

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer leaked the identity of a CIA operative to Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus during a 2003 phone call, Pincus testified Monday as the first defense witness in the CIA leak trial.

Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days later.

Pincus testified on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby is accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity.

Pincus, a veteran national security reporter, said he was talking to Fleischer for a story about weapons of mass destruction. He said Fleischer "suddenly swerved off" topic and asked why Pincus continued to write about Wilson.

"Don't you know his wife works for the CIA as an analyst?" Pincus recalled Fleischer saying.

Fleischer testified at the trial earlier that Libby had told him about Plame over lunch. Fleischer testified he leaked the information to three reporters during a presidential trip to Africa but he did not mention the Pincus conversation. In exchange for his testimony, prosecutors promised not to charge Fleischer.

Libby argues that he never discussed Plame with Fleischer. Pincus' testimony helps defense attorneys make the argument that Fleischer needed someone to blame to cover up his own leaking.

Novak, whose column triggered an FBI investigation into the leak, was also scheduled to testify Monday, attorneys said.

Novak has said that Richard Armitage, the former deputy secretary of state, and Bush aide Karl Rove were the sources for his July 2003 column.

"You're going to hear that," defense attorney Theodore Wells said in court Monday morning. "He's going to testify about that in a few hours."

Novak and Pincus are two of several journalists whom Libby's attorneys planned to call. These lawyers also are fighting hard to force NBC foreign affairs reporter Andrea Mitchell to testify about why she said that Plame's identity was "widely known" even before the Novak column was published.

Mitchell has since recanted those comments and has said that she cannot explain them.

A key dispute in the case involves Mitchell's NBC colleague, Tim Russert. Libby says Russert told him in July 2003 that "all the reporters know" Plame worked for the CIA. Russert said that never happened because he didn't know who Plame was at the time.

Prosecutors say Libby concocted the Russert story to shield him from prosecution for discussing information he had learned through official government channels.

Libby's attorneys want to show that Russert had heard that Plame worked at the CIA. Fleischer has already testified that he told NBC reporter David Gregory about her. If Libby can show that Mitchell knew, too, they think they can persuade jurors to believe Libby's account of the Russert conversation.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mitchell can be called as a witness but he wouldn't allow Libby's attorneys to ask about her inconsistent statements.

In addition to Mitchell, attorneys have said several other journalists are expected to testify this week: New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson, Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas, and Bob Woodward and Glenn Kessler, along with Pincus, from The Washington Post.

Associated Press writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Fleischer then and now: There's a telling difference

Once an unwavering administration foot soldier, the ex-White House spokesman gives an insider's account.

By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
January 30, 2007

WASHINGTON — As White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer was known for staying strictly on message, the public face of an administration reluctant to acknowledge mistakes or internal rifts.

But Fleischer was behind a different microphone Monday: He spent hours testifying in federal court on what it was like behind the scenes in 2003 when a key part of the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq disintegrated.

During more than three hours of testimony that offered a rare glimpse inside the usually secretive Bush White House, Fleischer showed little of the unyielding discipline that defined his tenure as press secretary. He pointed fingers at a former colleague, acknowledged frustration at how powerless he often was to sway the media, and described in detail the frantic White House efforts to contain a spreading public relations debacle.

Fleischer was the main prosecution witness Monday in the ongoing trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby stands accused of lying to federal authorities investigating the White House's role in exposing the identity of a clandestine CIA officer.

At one point Fleischer described the dismay he felt as it became increasingly clear that the White House could no longer back one of President Bush's most alarming remarks in his 2003 State of the Union speech — that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Africa.

After initially clinging to the claim, Fleisher said he was told that "the ground might be shifting" and that the credibility of his previous statements on the matter was crumbling. "The worst place to stand as White House press secretary," Fleischer said, "is when the ground is shifting."

Fleischer testified after being granted immunity by prosecutors, and his accounts could be damaging to Libby's defense. The former White House spokesman said he first learned of the CIA officer's identity from Libby, three days before Libby claims he heard the officer's name from news reporters. The CIA officer, Valerie Plame, is married to former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war whom the administration was trying to discredit.

But in some ways the legal significance of Fleischer's testimony was overshadowed by the insider account he provided into the administration's handling of the unraveling of its case for war with Iraq.

That unraveling accelerated July 6, 2003, when Wilson disclosed in a newspaper column that he had been sent by the U.S. government to Niger in 2002 to investigate the uranium claim and found it baseless — about 11 months before Bush repeated the allegation in the State of the Union address.

At first, Fleischer said, he tried to contain the damage by telling reporters that Wilson's account amounted to "Zero. Nada. Nothing new there."

White House officials hoped the story would die after acknowledging problems with the Niger claim and admitting the day after Wilson's column appeared that it "did not rise to the level" of a mention in a State of the Union address. Instead, Fleischer said, "that basically started the controversy and made it flame up and become the dominant issue."

During a five-day trip to Africa that same week, Condoleezza Rice told reporters that the Niger claim had been cleared by the CIA, something the agency vigorously disputed. "Had the director of Central Intelligence wanted those words out," she said, "they would have come out."

Fleischer said that only opened a new front in the fight. "The White House seems to be blaming the CIA," he said, noting that he called the agency's press office to tell them about Rice's remarks, and that the agency's public affairs director at the time, Bill Harlow, "was not happy."

Nor was Fleischer happy with the news coverage the next day. "Nothing close to it," he said. "The whole trip was mired in controversy about those 16 words," referring to the sentence in the president's State of the Union speech.

Fleischer said he doubted that the tip Libby gave him — that Plame, not the White House, had sent her husband to Niger — would mean much to reporters, who were more focused on the question of whether Bush had known the Niger claim was false than on who was behind Wilson's trip. But Fleischer said he gave it a try. At an event where young Ugandan children with AIDS were to sing to Bush, Fleischer said, he sidled up to a small group of reporters to mention the Wilson-CIA connection.

The reporters barely blinked.

"It was a big so what," Fleischer said. "It was like a lot of things that I said to the press. It had no impact."

Eventually, the tip about the connection between Plame and Wilson found a taker: Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage mentioned the couple to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who named Plame in a July 14, 2003, article. Although Armitage has admitted being Novak's source, he has not been charged with any crime.

Fleischer, whose testimony has concluded, often appeared more affable on the witness stand than he did during his two-plus years behind the lectern at the White House press room. He smiled toward jurors after being sworn in, and frequently touched his fingertips in the manner of a trained public speaker. His few displays of testiness came mainly during cross-examination by Libby's lawyers.

Fleischer left the White House in 2003 to launch his own communications consulting business. He got a farewell letter from Libby dated July 10 saying that he would be missed and that "we will still count on you to come to our rescue whenever the going gets tough."

As he testified against Libby Monday, Fleischer avoided eye contact with his former colleague.

greg.miller@latimes.com

Ex-Spokesman Fleischer Admits Iraq Media Spin

Former Press Secretary Says Libby Told Him of Plame
Fleischer's Testimony On Timing Supports Prosecution's Case

By Amy Goldstein and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, January 30, 2007; A03

Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testified yesterday that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby divulged Valerie Plame's identity to him in July 2003, three days earlier than Libby has told investigators he first learned of the undercover CIA officer.

Fleischer's narrative of Libby's "hush-hush" disclosures over a lunch table in a White House dining room made President Bush's former spokesman the most important prosecution witness to date in the week-old perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's onetime chief of staff.

Though a series of government officials have told the jury that Libby eagerly sought information about a prominent critic of the Iraq war, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, Fleischer was the first witness to say Libby then passed on what he learned: that Wilson's wife was a CIA officer who had sent him on a trip to Africa. Wilson's mission there was to explore reports, ultimately proved false, that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material in Niger.

Fleischer, testifying under an immunity agreement with the prosecution, also made it clear that Libby had told him Wilson's wife held a position in the CIA's counterproliferation division, where most employees work in a covert capacity.

Fleischer said he believes Libby mentioned Plame's name, although he told the jury he could not be sure. Libby "added that this was something hush-hush or on the QT, that not many people knew this information," Fleischer testified.

The unusual spectacle of a president's top spokesman testifying in open court widened the rare view the trial is providing the jury -- and the public -- of the inner workings of a White House that has proudly guarded its privacy.

Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury as well as obstructing justice in a federal investigation of who revealed Plame's name to journalists, including columnist Robert D. Novak, who first published it July 14, 2003. He is not charged with the leak itself, which administration critics have contended was designed to discredit Wilson's argument that the White House was twisting his findings as it justified the invasion of Iraq.

Libby has pleaded not guilty to all five felony counts. He told investigators he learned about Plame's identity during a telephone call on July 10, 2003, with NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert. He and his attorneys contend he did not remember the conversations he had with reporters about Plame amid the crush of his national security work.

Fleischer's testimony buttressed Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's case in at least two ways. Fleischer testified that his lunch with Libby -- the first he ever had with Cheney's top aide, a week before the press secretary was to leave his White House job -- took place on July 7, 2003, before Libby spoke with Russert.

Fleischer also reinforced the prosecution's central argument: that Libby had been so determined to learn and spread information about Wilson and Plame that he could not have forgotten his efforts.

Both sides have portrayed Libby and Cheney as especially eager to knock down news accounts that Cheney had asked for Wilson's trip.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney William Jeffress Jr., Fleischer said that his conversation with Libby about Wilson's wife had been short and that Fleischer had not relayed that information to reporters until he heard a similar account from another White House aide.

Fleischer testified that, later on the day of his lunch with Libby, he and other top aides left with President Bush on a five-day trip to several African nations. He said that while he was on Air Force One between South Africa and Uganda, he overheard Dan Bartlett, at the time Bush's communications director and now counselor to the president, "vent" about news accounts that Cheney had requested Wilson's mission.

Fleischer said that he decided to tell two reporters, NBC's David Gregory and Time magazine's John Dickerson, as they were walking along a road in Uganda: "If you want to know who sent the ambassador to Niger, it was his wife; she works there" -- a reference to the CIA.

In an interview yesterday, Dickerson, who has left Time and is writing about the trial for Slate, an online magazine, said he recalls that Fleischer had merely urged Gregory and him to "check and see who sent Wilson" on the trip. Dickerson said he first learned about Plame's CIA role from then-colleague Matthew Cooper by telephone several hours after he spoke with Fleischer.

Fleischer testified that neither Libby nor Bartlett invoked a White House protocol under which colleagues warned him when they were providing classified information that could not be discussed with reporters. He said he "never in my wildest dreams thought this information would be classified."

In September 2003, about 2 1/2 months after his conversations with reporters about Plame, Fleischer testified that he saw a news account that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate a possible illegal leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God. Did I play a role in somehow outing a CIA officer? . . . Did I just do something that I could be in big trouble for?' "

He said that, although he believed he had passed on classified information unwittingly, he hired lawyers who negotiated his immunity from prosecution, except for the possibility of perjury.

Late yesterday afternoon, Cheney's current chief of staff, David S. Addington, took the witness stand, testifying that Libby had, early in the summer of 2003, asked him whether the president had authority to declassify government secrets and whether the CIA kept paperwork documenting its work. Addington said he replied yes to both.

He testified that Libby did not tell him why he was asking. But Addington said he surmised that the reason might have been Wilson's criticism of the president and the war.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the first of several prominent journalists who figure in the case, probably would testify today.

Fitzgerald reveals immunity gamble in CIA leak case

AP - 1/26/2007 6:31 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald took a gamble three years ago that White House press secretary Ari Fleischer might break open his leak investigation.

As Fitzgerald's inquiry was heating up into who revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to reporters, Fleischer stepped forward with an offer: Give me immunity from prosecution and I'll give you information that might help your case.

What prosecutors didn't know was that Fleischer was one of the leakers. And without immunity, he refused to talk. Not even a hint.

Prosecutors normally insist on an informal account of what a witness will say before agreeing to immunity. It's known in legal circles as a proffer, and Fitzgerald said Thursday that he never got one from Fleischer, who was chief White House spokesman for the first 2 1/2 years of President Bush's first term.

"I didn't want to give him immunity. I did so reluctantly," Fitzgerald said in court. "I was buying a pig in a poke."

Once the deal was struck in February 2004, Fleischer revealed that he had discussed Plame with reporters in July 2003, days before leaving his job at the White House.

Fleischer, who made a brief appearance at the courthouse on Thursday, is expected to testify early next week that he learned that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA from I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby is being tried in U.S. District Court on charges of lying and obstructing Fitzgerald's investigation into who outed the CIA operative.

The Fleischer gamble is the second arrangement prosecutors are known to have made with leakers in the leak investigation.

At the onset of the case, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he told authorities that he was the source behind columnist Robert Novak's story that revealed Plame's identity and triggered the investigation.

Fitzgerald has not discussed the arrangement with Armitage but said Thursday that he granted immunity to Fleischer believing only that he had "relevant information."

The deal Fitzgerald made was unusual enough that Libby's defense lawyers questioned whether it could be true. They suggested that Fitzgerald got a secret summary of Fleischer's testimony _ a deal they want to discuss with jurors when Fleischer takes the stand against Libby on Monday.

Defense attorneys said they will ask U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton to force Fitzgerald to reveal what Fleischer promised him. Fitzgerald told Walton that no promises were made.

"We got no specifics," he said.