Bush Puzzled by Doubters

"MR. SNOW: These guys are trying to create an issue maybe for their own political fortunes, and they need to stop it. This is clearly a case where people are hyping something up. I don't know how much clearer we can be: We're not getting ready for war in Iran. But what we are doing is we're protecting our own people. And we're going to do it, and we've made it clear that that is going to be a priority."

But here's what I'd like to ask Snow: Has the president reviewed any plans for air strikes against Iranian targets? Are there people within the White House advocating for military action against Iran?

Scooter Libby Watch

Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "Six journalists testified yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, never mentioned an undercover CIA officer to them -- and some said they learned about her identity from other administration sources."

Kenneth R. Bazinet writes in the New York Daily News: "The testimony suggests a larger conspiracy among Bush aides to discredit Plame's husband, but it remained unclear how yesterday's disclosures will help Libby. The former aide to Vice President Cheney is not charged with leaking Plame's identity, but of lying to a grand jury investigating the leak."

Richard B. Schmitt and Greg Miller write in the Los Angeles Times: "Whatever its value to the defense may prove to be, the journalists' testimony made one thing clear: At a time when the Bush administration's rationale for going to war was coming under increasing attack, officials in the White House and beyond were doing a lot of talking to reporters about Plame -- even though it can be against the law to divulge the identity of covert intelligence agents."

Neil A. Lewis and Scott Shane write in the New York Times: "Mr. Libby's lawyers also made clear on Monday what they had only suggested in the past -- that they do not want to put him on the witness stand. But it also seemed likely that if they kept Mr. Libby off the stand, they might be hampered in using one of the pillars of their planned defense: that any misstatements he made were the result of a faulty memory."

Matt Apuzzo writes for the Associated Press: "Defense attorneys say they plan to call John Hannah, who served as Libby's deputy and was promoted to replace him when Libby was indicted in 2005 on perjury and obstruction charges.

"Hannah's testimony could effectively serve as a sit-in for Libby, whom attorneys seem reluctant to put on the stand. The attorneys want to make the case that any misstatements Libby made to investigators were the product of a faulty memory, not lies.

"To do that, they want to tell jurors about many of the classified national security discussions Libby was having in mid-2003, when CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was leaked to reporters during the early months of the Iraq war."

The Pincus Revelation

The only real news yesterday was that Post reporter Walter Pincus finally publicly identified his mystery source.

As Pincus explained in a 2005 article for Nieman Reports: "On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction."

When special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald wanted Pincus to divulge his source, he refused. "My position was that until my source came forward publicly or to the prosecutor, I would not discuss the matter. It turned out that my source . . . had in fact disclosed to the prosecutor that he was my source, and he talked to the prosecutor about our conversation."