Court papers: Bush authorized intel leak

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.\nBefore his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.\nThere was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.\nThe disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.\nBush's political foes jumped on the revelation about Libby's testimony.\n"The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America's security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said.\n"The more we hear, the more it is clear this goes way beyond Scooter Libby," said New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer. At the very least, President Bush and Vice President Cheney should fully inform the American people of any role in allowing classified information to be leaked."\nLibby's testimony also puts the president and the vice president in the awkward position of authorizing leaks -- a practice both have long said they abhor, so much so that the administration has put in motion criminal investigations to hunt down leakers.\nThe most recent instance is the administration's launching of a probe into who disclosed to The New York Times the existence of the warrantless domestic surveillance program authorized by Bush shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.\nThe authorization involving intelligence information came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the Bush administration had given for going to war.\nLibby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003, "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate," the papers filed by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the "certain information."\n"Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller -- getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval were unique in his recollection," the papers added.\nThe court filing was first disclosed by The New York Sun.