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Former Press Secretary Says Libby Told Him of Plame
Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, second from right, walks with members of his legal team as he leaves the federal courthouse.
(By Kevin Wolf -- Associated Press)
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Fleischer testified that, later on the day of his lunch with Libby, he and other top aides left with President Bush on a five-day trip to several African nations. He said that while he was on Air Force One between South Africa and Uganda, he overheard Dan Bartlett, at the time Bush's communications director and now counselor to the president, "vent" about news accounts that Cheney had requested Wilson's mission.
Fleischer said that he decided to tell two reporters, NBC's David Gregory and Time magazine's John Dickerson, as they were walking along a road in Uganda: "If you want to know who sent the ambassador to Niger, it was his wife; she works there" -- a reference to the CIA.
In an interview yesterday, Dickerson, who has left Time and is writing about the trial for Slate, an online magazine, said he recalls that Fleischer had merely urged Gregory and him to "check and see who sent Wilson" on the trip. Dickerson said he first learned about Plame's CIA role from then-colleague Matthew Cooper by telephone several hours after he spoke with Fleischer.
Fleischer testified that neither Libby nor Bartlett invoked a White House protocol under which colleagues warned him when they were providing classified information that could not be discussed with reporters. He said he "never in my wildest dreams thought this information would be classified."
In September 2003, about 2 1/2 months after his conversations with reporters about Plame, Fleischer testified that he saw a news account that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate a possible illegal leak of a covert CIA officer's identity.
"I thought, 'Oh, my God. Did I play a role in somehow outing a CIA officer? . . . Did I just do something that I could be in big trouble for?' "
He said that, although he believed he had passed on classified information unwittingly, he hired lawyers who negotiated his immunity from prosecution, except for the possibility of perjury.
Late yesterday afternoon, Cheney's current chief of staff, David S. Addington, took the witness stand, testifying that Libby had, early in the summer of 2003, asked him whether the president had authority to declassify government secrets and whether the CIA kept paperwork documenting its work. Addington said he replied yes to both.
He testified that Libby did not tell him why he was asking. But Addington said he surmised that the reason might have been Wilson's criticism of the president and the war.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said that former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the first of several prominent journalists who figure in the case, probably would testify today.
