Pole Dancing In The Dark

I read your recent article dated Friday, April 7th, 2006 entitled, “Bush Authorized Secrets’ Release, Libby Testified: Prosecutor Says Disclosures on Iraq Were Aimed at War Critic” and I wanted to ask for some clarification.

I noticed that the title of the piece clearly mentions that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald asserts that the “leak” of certain classified information from an NIE document was meant to directly undermine Ms. Plame’s husband, however I found it interesting that you seemed to regard this assertion as proven fact throughout the article. Here are examples of the kind of remarks to which I refer:

“But in the past 33 months the White House has never disclosed Bush's apparent involvement in the deliberate disclosure of information meant to undermine Wilson.”

“The revelation of Bush's role in the disclosure effort set off an intense political debate yesterday over the propriety of the White House's use of intelligence information to undermine a critic.”

“That NIE contained information that Bush and Cheney felt would rebut Wilson's claims about the exaggeration of Iraq's nuclear threat.”

In each case, you appear to be framing the allegation on the part of Mr. Fitzgerald as proven fact. To my knowledge, the assertion that this “leak” was meant to specifically discredit Mr. Wilson is nothing more than conjecture. If you have evidence to the contrary, I would be very interested in hearing it. For the record, I am not trying to say that there isn’t the possibility of this allegation actually being true. After all, anyone can see that such a move would be beneficial to the Bush Administration’s position with respect to Mr. Wilson. I am simply hesitant to categorize this as fact until a substantive link is established. Right now, absent any further evidence that may not have been divulged in your article, it appears to only be an allegation that has been erroneously characterized as hard fact.

Another aspect of the piece I found worthy of mention is a slightly out-of-balance characterization of the release of previously classified NIE information on the part of the President and Vice President. In your article, I found only one sentence that spoke about the undisputed fact that the President and the Vice President have the authority to do exactly what they have done. This portrayal seems a bit lean on support of established law and a bit heavy on partisan noise-making. You and I both know the reasons why any administration would seek to alter the way in which information is released to the press and ultimately to the public. To leave the current administration undefended to such a degree on this issue is something I feel might have been a bit unfair.

The last point I want to raise is with regard to the following part of the article:

“Libby told Miller, among other things, that the NIE concluded Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure uranium,’ according to Fitzgerald's filing. In fact, the CIA did not believe this allegation, which came from the Defense Intelligence Agency and remains unproved to this day, according to intelligence analysts.”

It would be extremely helpful if you could name these intelligence analysts. You have done an excellent job of providing details in the article which is what made this particular section stand out in contrast. I have heard there are some within the CIA who do would disagree with what you have written so if this is truly more than just the musings of some unnamed sources, I would be interested in some additional information in order to put the issue to rest with the help of some supporting facts.