JASON LEOPOLD: CIA LEAK PATH: CHENEY, LIBBY, WOODWARD!!!

[kpete]

CIA Leak Path: Cheney, Libby, Woodward
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 06 March 2006

In mid-June 2003, when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's criticism against the White House's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence started to make national headlines, Vice President Dick Cheney told his former chief of staff and close confidant I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to leak classified intelligence data on Iraq's nuclear ambitions to a legendary Washington journalist in order to undercut the charges made against the Bush administration by the former ambassador.

On June 27, 2003, Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, became the first journalist to whom Libby leaked a portion of the classified National Intelligence Estimate that purportedly showed how Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger.

This story is based on interviews with current and former administration officials who work or worked at the CIA, the State Department and the National Security Council. All of the individuals are familiar with the events that took place in the days that led up to Libby's meeting with Woodward and other journalists in which the NIE was discussed.

Woodward, currently an assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, did not return calls for comment. Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the Post, would not comment for this story. A spokeswoman for Cheney said she could not comment for this story, and attorneys for Libby did not return calls for comment.

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The leak of the NIE to Woodward was orchestrated by Cheney and Libby in mid-June 2003 in hopes that Woodward would write a story for the Washington Post that would contradict the assertions made by Wilson - that there was no truth to intelligence cited by the Bush administration on numerous occasions that Iraq tried to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger.

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It was then that Cheney decided the only way to counter Wilson's criticism was by having Libby leak portions of the NIE to a select group of reporters whose previous work in their respective publications had advanced the White House's political agenda.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606Z.shtml