From The Boston Globe
Editorial

President Bush was emphatic in July 2003: ”If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.” According to a federal prosecutor this week, the president himself authorized the leaking of classified CIA material. This whole affair cries out for a congressional investigation into the leak, and also into the broader question of how President Bush and Vice President Cheney used intelligence to draw the United States into war with Iraq.

By that July the US military had occupied Iraq for two months, and the administration was backpedaling from its prewar assessments that the country was filled with weapons of mass destruction. Most embarrassing had been Bush’s assertion in his State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire uranium from Niger. Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson disclosed that July that he had gone to Niger the previous year and found the allegation baseless.

White House aides made it seem Wilson’s mission did not influence the CIA assessment of Iraqi weapons. They contended he was sent to Niger mainly because Valerie Plame, his wife, worked for the agency. Unmasking Plame provoked a grand jury investigation, the indictment of Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby, and now the disclosure that Bush was behind the leak of the CIA assessment.

No one is saying Bush wanted Plame’s identity to be revealed, and leaks are an integral aspect of official Washington. Bush may technically not have leaked secrets since presidents apparently can declassify information at will. The disclosure that Bush plays the Washington game, however, shows his hypocrisy and ought to inhibit him from threatening newspapers that use leaks to report essential information.

Bush’s leak is more telling as an example of how classified information can be used for a political purpose, in this case to limit damage from the earlier misinformation.