For Bush, Effect of Investigation of C.I.A. Leak Case Is Uncertain

[papau]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/politics/24bush.html

July 24, 2005
For Bush, Effect of Investigation of C.I.A. Leak Case Is Uncertain
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, July 23 - <snip>For all that, it is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a C.I.A. operative's identity will mean for President Bush. So far the disclosures about the involvement of Karl Rove, among others, have not exacted any substantial political price from the administration. And nobody has suggested that the investigation directly implicates the president.
<snip>

For starters, did Mr. Bush know in the fall of 2003, when he was telling the public that no one wanted to get to the bottom of the case more than he did, that Mr. Rove, his longtime strategist and senior adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had touched on the C.I.A. officer's identity in conversations with journalists before the officer's name became public? If not, when did they tell him, and what would the delay say in particular about his relationship with Mr. Rove, whose career and Mr. Bush's have been intertwined for decades?

Then there is the broader issue of whether Mr. Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the C.I.A. officer's identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program.<snip>

But Mr. Bush's political opponents say the president is in a box. In their view, either Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby kept the president in the dark about their actions, making them appear evasive at a time when Mr. Bush was demanding that his staff cooperate fully with the investigation, or Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby had told the president and he was not forthcoming in his public statements about his knowledge of their roles.<snip>


Mr. Bush has also yet to answer any questions publicly about what if anything he learned from aides about Mr. Wilson and Ms. Wilson in the days after Mr. Wilson leveled his criticism of the administration in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003.