Bush on CIA Leak Case

After hiding behind the cover of an ongoing investigation, President Bush spoke out yesterday about the CIA leak case. He defended his commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence, but as John Dickerson in Slate, points out he made the stunning admission that he hasn't talked to any leaker in the administration about their role in the case. This is either a lie and he has talked to them or he is so isolated that he's never brought it up with his right hand man Rove which makes him seem even more out of it than we thought.

Bush then proceeded to make it sound as if there'd been only one leaker, the State Department's Richard Armitage. Bush said: "I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, 'I did it.''' Bush said.

"Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter?'' the president asked. "But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course and now we're going to move on.''

Okay, there's no "perhaps" here. At least four people in the administration leaked the identity of a covert operative--Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Richard Armitage and Ari Fleischer. Armitage may have been the first but he wasn't the only one. Second, the "person"--presumably Armitage--did come forward to the prosecutor as soon as he realized he was the leaker. If the investigation dragged on, it's because Libby lied about his role and Rove had, to be charitable, a memory lapse about his conversations with me and Robert Novak for months.

By the way, could Bush bring himself to apologize to Valerie Plame? Of course not. All he said was that it was "rough" for people in the White House and that it was time to move on. Tell that to Valerie Plame.