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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan says top administration officials -- including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- were involved in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the leak of a CIA operative's identity. In October 2003, as controversy grew about the leak of Valerie Plame's name, McClellan stood at the White House podium and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. "There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened,"...

KING: Scott, were you lied to? MCCLELLAN: Well, Larry, I said what I believed to be true at the time. It was also what the president believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given.

WASHINGTON - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

WASHINGTON — Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is lashing out at the Bush administration's handling of the CIA leak case in his new book over what he said was intentional misinformation given to him by the administration and claiming the president was "involved" in the media run-around. The Politico reported Tuesday on its Web site that the publisher of "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong With Washington" released a three-paragraph excerpt of the book highlighting the contentious period. [snip] "I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of...

Who by now doesn’t know the tangled, twisted story of Valerie Plame? In case you just came in from the cold, the former CIA agent’s cover was blown after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a blistering New York Times opinion piece charging the Bush administration with manipulating WMD intelligence to justify the Iraq war. Then came Scooter and Judith and Karl; the clarion calls for frog-marching; the double secret background e-mails; the turning of aspens and the rest. This month, the sexy ex-spy’s memoir, “Fair Game,” landed on bestseller lists. Earlier this year it was optioned for a...

WASHINGTON - Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Sunday he was foolish to have revealed Valerie Plame's CIA identity. Armitage's acknowledgment came in response to comments by Plame, who said the former Bush administration official had no right to talk to a reporter about where she worked. A year ago, Armitage publicly apologized to Plame and her husband. The former No. 2 State Department official remains the only principal in the leak to have done so. At least three one-time administration officials in addition to Armitage discussed Plame's CIA status with reporters. They are former White House political...

Q. Is it possible to get through an extended interview of Valerie Plame Wilson without mentioning Richard Armitage? A. Yes, if Joe Scarborough is the interviewer. The "Morning Joe" host conducted a 15-minute conversation with and about Plame today, much of which focused on her "outing" as a CIA operative. But the name of the State Department official who first disclosed her identity was never uttered. That wouldn't have fit the template that the disclosure was a nasty White House plot to punish Plame's husband Joe Wilson. Armitage, at State, was anything but a partisan GOP operative with an anti-Wilson...

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. --Outed spy Valerie Plame says she isn't going away, no matter what the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue want.

If Valerie Plame's memoir was intended to lay to rest the conflicting accounts of how she came to be outed as a covert CIA agent, it fails. Instead, she paints herself as a naïve, whinging victim of circumstance married to an angry, obstreperous egotist who volunteered to involve himself in a vicious battle between the White House and the CIA over how President Bush came to make untrue statements in a State of the Union speech. Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (Simon and Schuster, $26) shows how mistaken her husband's judgment was....

Media: In the proud tradition of Dan Rather's bogus National Guard story about President Bush, Katie Couric gives Valerie Plame another opportunity to lie to the American people. Will her book make the New York Times fiction list? Plame, the photogenic answer to Maxwell Smart, kicked off her tour to promote her new book, "Fair Game," with a "60 Minutes" interview with Katie Couric that couldn't have been more scripted if Plame herself had written the softball questions. The segment amounted to an infomercial for the media's portrayal of Plame and her prevaricating spouse as helpless victims of a White...

To flip through the first third of Valerie Plame Wilson's "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House" is to confront an optical maze of gray stripes interrupting juicy anecdotes and methodical musings. CIA censors blacked out 10 percent of the text in her memoir, leaving its narrative disjointed and sometimes hard to follow. "I believe the vast majority of what is blacked out in the book has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with diminishing me and Joe," she said. Agency censors also wouldn't allow Plame Wilson to acknowledge working...

Valerie Plame Wilson chides President Bush for not firing anyone for the leaking of her covert CIA identity, which caused a national scandal and an investigation resulting in a perjury and obstruction of justice conviction against Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff. She also tells Katie Couric that she has learned of the damage that the leaking of her identity caused agents of the clandestine service and it is serious. Wilson speaks to Couric in her first interview for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. . . . Plame says the...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Columnist Robert Novak said Saturday Ambassador Joe Wilson did not forcefully object to the naming of his CIA operative wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, when Novak spoke to him prior to the publication of a column that sparked a federal investigation and sent White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to jail. “He was not terribly exercised about it,” Novak said. Instead, Wilson focused on not being portrayed as simply an opponent of the Iraq war. Wilson also stressed that his wife went by his last name, Wilson, rather than Plame, Novak said. Novak forcefully defended his handling of the column...

Lindsay Moran read "Harriet the Spy" as a girl and dreamed of growing up to join the CIA. After graduating from Harvard, she did just that. In her new book, "Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy," Moran shows readers the real world of espionage is quite different from the Hollywood version. CNN national security correspondent David Ensor spoke with Moran about her career as a spy. ENSOR: What made you decide to apply to the CIA? MORAN: It had been a lifelong dream of mine. I grew up reading this series of books called "Harriet the Spy,"...

Is Plame to Blame? by: Bethany Stotts, August 16, 2007 The Valerie Plame Affair, which resulted in the conviction of White House aide Louis “Scooter” Libby, serves as rallying point for many opponents of the Bush Administration. However, some conservatives remain skeptical of Plame’s alleged victim status. While her job description was listed on the CIA rolls as an agent with “no official cover” (NOC), Plame had in reality had been performing administrative duties at Langley for at least five years. She remains willing to pose for the cameras as a starlet ex-agent, and continues participating in high-level lawsuits. Rowan...

Sean Hannity shows you the secret CIA documents that reveal the truth about Joe and Valerie Wilso. Sunday, August 12 at 9 p.m. ET

Rod Lurie will next direct his script "Nothing but the Truth," a drama about a D.C.-based female newspaper reporter who outs a CIA agent and is imprisoned for refusing to reveal her source. Cast is mobilizing for an October production start. Talks are under way for Kate Beckinsale to play the journalist, Matt Dillon the prosecutor, Vera Farmiga the CIA agent, Edie Falco (in her first role since "The Sopranos") the editor of the newspaper that published the story and Alan Alda the attorney who tries to free the reporter from jail. Marc Frydman will produce and the Yari Film...

A federal judge Thursday dismissed a lawsuit by former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband seeking damages against officials she accused of conspiring to disclose her identity. The defendants included Vice President Dick Cheney, former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter� Libby, and two others. Plame and her husband, former diplomat Joe Wilson, had alleged that Cheney, Libby, White House political adviser Karl Rove and former State Department official Richard Armitage had violated their constitutional rights in the events that led to Plame being identified in news reports in summer 2003.

Valerie Wilson may be the best known former intelligence operative in recent history, but a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she was not allowed to say how long she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the memoir she plans to publish this fall. Although the fact that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. from 1985 to 2006 has been published in the Congressional Record and elsewhere, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Wilson was not free to say so. “The information at issue was properly classified, was never declassified...

Apparently one of the movie roles that Alec Baldwin won't be playing in the future is that of Sherlock Holmes. Baldwin writes an entire Huffington Post blog, Prosecuting Those Responsible For Outing Valerie Plame, without once mentioning the name of the leaker---Richard Armitage. Baldwin starts out with a fantasy about the things he would do if he were play-acting as president: The fifth thing that I would do is to prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. At this point you would think that Baldwin would lash out at the leaker, Richard Armitage, or at...

BURLINGAME — A legal team that includes Burlingame attorney Joe Cotchett is moving ahead with a civil suit on behalf of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, following a setback in federal court. The Wilsons have filed an appeal of a decision last week by U.S. District Judge John Bates, who dismissed their suit against four Bush Administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The Wilsons are seeking unspecified monetary damages for the defendants' alleged roles in leaking Plame's identity to punish Wilson,...

The hypocritical braying that has greeted George W. Bush's commutation of White House aide "Scooter" Libby's (pictured) prison sentence continues. "The president's critics are contrasting his leniency for Libby with his overall advocacy of stiff sentences," writes the San Francisco Chronicle this week. I think the scandal isn't the President's lenience for Libby, but that Libby was prosecuted in the first place. Here are the facts. A former ambassador named Joseph Wilson wrote an article in 2003, suggesting that the President had played fast and loose with intelligence to justify his invasion of Iraq. The piece appeared in The New...

<p>Judge dismisses Valerie Plame's lawsuit accusing members of the Bush administration of leaking her identity... Developing..</p>

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson signed on with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign yesterday, saying "it's entirely possible" his ex-spy wife will hit the trail with her, too. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a covert CIA operations officer by President Bush's advisers in 2003 as they sought to discredit her Iraq war critic husband. She's writing a memoir due in the fall. "I would expect her to be engaged [politically] probably after the book tour," Wilson told the Daily News after Clinton announced his endorsement. Wilson said his wife shunned politics during her two decades as a covert spy. But...

As everybody knows by now, it was Richard L. Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, who was the original source of Robert Novak's now-famous column of July 14, 2003, in which Valerie Plame, wife of Joseph Wilson, was outed as a CIA operative. Novak implied that she was instrumental in getting her husband the mission to Niger to check out reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear project. President Bush had mentioned this information in his message to Congress. But when Wilson returned, he wrote an article for the New York Times in which...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Tom Davis, ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is puzzled by the House Intelligence Committee's claim that Valerie Plame Wilson has been consistent in her sworn testimony. He is asking the Intelligence Committee for documents to back up their contention. Davis last month noted that Mrs. Wilson had testified to his committee that she, as a CIA employee, had not suggested the fact-finding mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. She earlier had told the Senate Intelligence Committee staff that she did not recall whether she made such a proposal....

Whatever Happened to Lynne Stewart? PASSION DISTORTS PERSPECTIVE. Nowhere is that more evident than in Rep. John Conyers' inquiry into the commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence. Yesterday, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wasted a calendar day holding hearings on “The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials.” Apparently afflicted with the glut of inside the Beltway gut-feeling policymaking, Conyers confessed he launched the inquest because his “suspicion was that if Mr. Libby went to prison, he might further implicate other people in the White House.” [1] Chief among his witnesses was former Ambassador Joseph...

I thought I was reading an opinion piece! I can't believe this crap! This is the kind of bias you get when you sign on to your Yahoo mail. Always AP headlines that are incredibly anti-Bush and anti-war. I'm sick of the AP and I'm sick of Yahoo!

President George W. Bush has publicly acknowledged for the first time that someone in his administration likely leaked the identity of a CIA operative, but he said it's time to "move on." ...Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, was the highest White House official convicted in a government scandal since the Iran-Contra affair. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/politics/13670689/detail.html ******** For some reason the name William Jefferson Clinton rings a bell as another "white house offical" who was impeached for obstruction of justice? ...seems the MSM has blurred my memory.

Do you believe Democrats will be swept into control of the White House, the House, and the Senate next year on a wave of public outrage over the CIA leak affair? Neither do I. Democrats might indeed win it all in 2008, but Plamegate won’t be the reason. Nevertheless, some are still trying to wring the last drops of political benefit from the CIA leak saga, still acting as if the public is hungry for one more retelling of the story. The latest retelling came Wednesday, when House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) held a hearing entitled “The...

In commuting the defendant's thirty-month term of incarceration, the President stated that the sentence imposed by this Court was "excessive" and that two years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine alone are "harsh punishment" for an individual convicted on multiple counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators. July 2, 2006 Statement by the President on Executive Clemency for Lewis Libby at 1. Although it certainly is the Presidents prerogative to justify the exercise of his constitutional commutation power in the manner he chooses (or even to decline to provide a reason for his...

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions," the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a scholarly New York Democrat, used to say, "but not their own facts." Sorry, "Pat." But, my e-mail box runneth over with misconceptions from readers who feel entitled to their own facts about President Bush's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence. The former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney had been sentenced to 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine before President Bush commuted the prison term, calling it "excessive." However, Bush let the fine stand, along with probation.

When he used his clemency power to keep I. Lewis Libby out of prison, President Bush said a sentence of two and a half years was excessive punishment for lying to federal investigators about conversations with reporters. I agree. But the president's sudden desire to correct unjust sentences is hard to credit, given how little interest he has shown in this area until now. In six and a half years, Bush has granted 113 pardons, typically used to clear the records of reformed criminals after they've completed their sentences. Counting Libby's, he has issued only four commutations, which allow people...

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's commutation of a prison term for a former aide to Vice President Cheney did not play well with the public or even Republicans, a survey found. In a USA Today-Gallup poll released on Tuesday, 66 percent said Bush should not have intervened in the case of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, whose sentence for obstructing justice in the CIA leak case included a 2 1/2-year prison term. Thirteen percent said the president's move was correct, and 6 percent said Bush should have given Libby a full pardon. Bush didn't even receive much of a boost in support...

The New York Times waited just hours after President Bush commuted the sentence of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., before issuing an editorial condemning the president's decision. -SNIP-The Times editorial made much of the supposed hypocrisy of the tough-on-crime right in supporting the decision to commute the sentence. It ran out its editorial under the headline "soft on crime," though it has been soft on crime for years, save for when Republicans are in the dock. Its support for throwing a public official in jail for 30 months for the crime of trying to...

Let me now -- and not for the first time -- rush in where angels fear to tread. I support President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. I have never met Mr. Libby. I have not been asked by any of his friends or family to assist him. So why am I taking this step, which is sure to be criticized by many of my friends and supporters? It is because I believe in fairness. To remain silent because speaking out would not be popular is to invite punishment in the world to come. What are the facts in...

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) on Monday urged President Bush to waive executive privilege and allow White House aides to discuss the decision behind Scooter Libby’s commutation. In light of Libby’s prison sentence being commuted, Conyers is holding a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the use of presidential clemency power. Calling the decision “highly controversial” in a letter to Bush, the Michigan Democrat references “commentators” who are suggesting that Libby’s commutation removes any incentive for him to provide more information on the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name to the press. Conyers cites past examples of...

When I went to my office Monday, July 7, 2003, Joe Wilson was not in the forefront of my mind. Frances Fragos Townsend was. She had just been named deputy national security adviser at the White House though her background was in liberal Democratic politics, including Attorney General Janet Reno's inner circle during the Clinton administration. Her appointment was a political mystery of the kind I had been exploring for forty years in my column. I wrote the Townsend column Tuesday morning because I had a busy schedule the rest of the day, including a 3 p.m. appointment with Richard...

With supporters running away from him -- on his immigration policy, on Iraq -- with his popularity plummeting, as Republican politicians seek safe harbor, with critics sniping, there are qualities to admire about President Bush. Almost alone, stubbornly, he stands with our allies, including Israel, refusing to back down from Islamic terrorists working American public opinion in Iraq. He continues to pressure Iran on its pursuit of an Islamic theocratic nuclear nightmare in the Middle East. He stands for life, opposed to the popular drumbeat from those who would use some human lives to benefit other, more powerful lives through...

Senators want Libby prosecutor to testify 14 minutes ago The Senate Judiciary Committee may seek testimony from controversial prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the obstruction of justice case against vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, two senators said on Sunday. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican member of the committee, said he wanted to hear from Fitzgerald because, "I still haven't figured out what that case is all about." Libby, the one-time top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was found guilty in March of obstructing an investigation into who blew the cover of a CIA analyst whose husband...

`Suspicion' about Libby's commutation By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer 25 minutes ago The Democrat probing President Bush's decision to erase the prison sentence of a former White House aide said Sunday there is "the suspicion" the aide might have fingered others in the Bush administration if he served time. The House Judiciary Committee chairman spoke of "the general impression" that Bush last week commuted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 2 1/2 year sentence in the CIA leak case to keep Libby quiet. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has scheduled a committee hearing Wednesday on the matter. Bush contended Libby's sentence was...

Former Senator Fred Thompson thanked the New York Times and Hillary Clinton campaign Saturday for some publicity in the “Scooter” Libby case. Thompson, speaking before the Young Republican National Convention Saturday in Hollywood, Florida, told the crowd how he had been an early supporter of Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s legal defense. “I didn’t know Scooter, but I knew an injustice when I saw one,” the former actor told the crowd. He went on to offer some word of thanks for the publicity about his support of Libby. “The New York Times and the Hillary Clinton campaign have got us number one...

Scooter Libby Roundup FACE THE FACTS: The reason Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence was SO LIBBY WOULDN'T TALK. Bush “guaranteed not only that Libby wouldn’t talk, but retaining Libby’s right to invoke the Fifth. This amounts to nothing less than obstruction of justice.” Now, the Bush administration is legally protected from having to answer questions. If Libby had been in prison, anyone could have gotten to him. Now, no one can get Libby to say a word about the real culprits, which are obviously Rove and Cheney/Bush. **First of all, it's vitally important to understand what Valerie Plame was actually...

President Bush’s commutation of Lewis Libby’s prison term was the right thing to do because it enables Libby to continue to fight in the courts for total exoneration. Libby was the victim of an over-zealous prosecutor and media and a jury which was prejudiced against him by pre-trial publicity. He deserves not only to be free from prison but to be declared an honest man and dedicated public servant who did his duty as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney’s motive, which is hardly surprising, was to set the record straight about the activities of former Ambassador...

I understand the angst of certain rule of law proponents upset by President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's conviction. But most of the people outraged by it have no credibility, since they were utterly indifferent to the Clintons' habitual mockery of the rule of law and prolific and shady abuse of the pardon power during their co-presidency. As the president clearly has the constitutional authority to pardon or commute sentences for almost any reason, the issue isn't one of authority, but propriety. As a rule of law conservative I don't take lightly such executive interventions in the judicial process, believing...

In drama – and in real life as well - players and events thrown together in improbable circumstances cause surprising or unanticipated outcomes ("situational irony"). When the drama is played out in Washington, D.C., there is always a Greek chorus of hypocrites who loudly criticize the players for infractions of which they, too, are guilty.With this in mind, isn’t it ironic that:† During the course ofan investigation to determine who identified Valerie Plame as a CIA employee, Richard Armitage - who admitted being the leaker - has not been indicted or prosecuted?† Rather than shutting down the investigation after the...

Notice the pattern: When the heat was on in the CIA leak case, Bush issued a strong pledge to fire anybody involved in leaking. He didn't. When Libby was indicted, Bush ducked comment until Libby was at prison's door. Now, by keeping Libby free, Bush can conveniently postpone a full pardon until after the 2008 election. In the meantime, Libby has no incentive to tell prosecutors anything new about what happened in this case. As liberal blogs have noted, since he was not pardoned outright, he can use the pending appeal of his conviction to avoid testifying before Congress. It's...

We have urged President Bush to pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby from the moment a jury found Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff guilty of perjury and obstruction in the CIA-leak case. Now the president has acted. He didn't go as far as we would have liked, choosing to commute Libby's prison term while leaving his conviction, fine, and probation intact. But his action ensures that Libby will not go to jail, and that's a good thing. There were a lot of reasons why presidential clemency was appropriate. The first is that the CIA-leak investigation was a fundamentally political...

The House Judiciary Committee has officially announced its plans for a hearing into President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison term. The hearing will take place next Wednesday morning; titled "The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials." "In light of yesterday's announcement by the President that he was commuting the prison sentence for Scooter Libby, it is imperative that Congress look into presidential authority to grant clemency, and how such power may be abused," John Conyers said. "Taken to its extreme, the use of such authority could completely circumvent the law enforcement process and prevent...