Washington – At the same time in July 2003 that a CIA operative’s identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.
The two issues had become inextricably linked because Joseph C. Wilson IV, the husband of the unmasked CIA officer, had questioned Bush’s assertion, prompting a damage-control effort by the White House that included challenging Wilson’s standing and his credentials.
A federal grand jury investigation is underway by a special counsel to determine whether someone illegally leaked the officer’s identity and possibly into whether perjury or obstruction of justice occurred during the inquiry.
People who have been briefed on the case said that the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., were helping to prepare what became the administration’s primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been included in Bush’s State of the Union address six months earlier.
They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address.
At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an op-ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Bush’s speech.
The work done by Rove and Libby on the Tenet statement, during this intense period, had not been previously disclosed.