WASHINGTON — A House committee chairman said Tuesday that he is seeking more documents from the CIA leak probe because of significant disclosures to the FBI by Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff and new details about Cheney’s role in the scandal in a book by a former White House press secretary.
The request to the Justice Department by Rep. Henry Waxman follows a review of edited FBI reports and publication of a book by President Bush’s former spokesman Scott McClellan, who has said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of Lewis “Scooter” Libby in leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
Waxman, D-Calif., sent a letter to the Justice Department after learning that Libby, Cheney’s former top aide, told the FBI that it’s possible he was instructed by Cheney to disseminate information to the media about Plame, the wife of Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson.
“This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter,” Waxman wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Waxman’s request was fueled in part by McClellan’s book, in which he describes how he was instructed to respond to media inquiries about Libby’s role in the Plame leak. McClellan has said publicly in recent days that Bush and Cheney “directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby.”
