Dems holding own hearings on Rove, White House leaks

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats will conduct an unofficial hearing Friday that may return public attention to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and any role he had in disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer whose husband criticized pre-war intelligence President Bush used to justify the war in Iraq.

Congressional Republicans complained that Democrats arranged the hearing because the president's nomination of John Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court this week has distracted much of Washington from developments in a federal investigation of the White House leaks that resulted in the public identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Democrats "will do everything they can ... to keep Karl Rove on the front page," said Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the former chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, which develops the legislative agenda of the GOP leadership. "This issue deserves to be vetted, but it has been vetted for three years," he told Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill.

But amid all the attention to the Supreme Court nomination this week, there have been several news accounts about a classified State Department memorandum central to the federal investigation of the White House leaks, a three-page document that reportedly contains information about Plame, identifying her as a CIA operative and the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret.

Federal law prohibits a federal official from knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert CIA official, a crime that is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But while Rove was a source for Time magazine reports about Plame, he has publicly denied that he knew her name or disclosed it to anyone.

The Republican National Committee has circulated "talking points" to Republican congressional leaders and activists questioning whether Plame was undercover and deserves the protection provided under federal law - an action that led a group of former CIA officers to send letters to Congress this week demanding that it "stop the campaign of disparagement and innuendo" against Plame.

The 11 former agents and analysts, led by retired analyst Larry Johnson, the most outspoken supporter of Plame since the controversy, are scheduled to testify at Friday's unofficial hearing.

Democrats contend they have to hold their own unofficial hearing because the Republican leadership of the House and Senate refuses to conduct an official inquiry into whether the Bush White House leaked information about Plame in an attempt to discredit her husband, Wilson, a former acting ambassador to Iraq.

"That's really unfortunate that it has come to that, because when the national security of our country can be affected ... the Congress should act in a bipartisan way to get to the bottom of the matter," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California told reporters. "Of course, it is typical of this Congress that there is no oversight over the administration in any way, especially in the House."

The hearing is being conducted by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Committee, but it lacks the official standing of a committee of Congress.

"People think this is a political game of gotcha," Dorgan said. "It is not that at all. These issues are life and death."

Earlier this month, Waxman renewed his request to Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, that the panel to investigate the Plame leak, but Davis has not responded so far. Waxman's request originated in September, several months after it was first disclosed by conservative newspaper columnist and CNN commentator Robert Novak that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and played a role in getting Wilson assigned the task of investigating intelligence suggesting Iraq was pursuing material for nuclear weapons.

Waxman said the new disclosures raise the issue of whether there was a "conspiracy" in the White House to discredit Wilson because he questioned the evidence upon which the president rested claims that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, as he has throughout much of July, declined to respond directly to questions about Rove and the special investigation of White House leaks. He also refused to discuss the recent news accounts about the State Department memo that identified Plame.

The memo was written June 10, 2003, and delivered to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell on July 7, 2003, as he left with President Bush on Air Force One on a trip to Africa, according to accounts this week in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Seven days after Powell received the memo, Novak's column unmasking Plame was published.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, said his client did not see the State Department memo until it was shown to him by "people in the special prosecutor's office."