Bush Seeks Legal Counsel

[JackSpratts]

Bush Finds a Lawyer to Use if Called in C.I.A. Leak Case

President Bush has met with a private lawyer whom he intends to hire to represent him if he is questioned as part of a grand jury investigation into the public disclosure of a C.I.A. undercover officer's identity, the White House said Wednesday.

Mr. Bush met recently with the Washington lawyer, Jim Sharp, to consult with him about the case, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said, confirming a report on "CBS Evening News.''

"The president has had discussions with Mr. Sharp, and in the event he would need his advice, the president would likely retain him," Mr. McClellan said in a telephone interview.

"The president has stated on numerous occasions that he wants the White House to fully cooperate, and that would include himself," he added. "He wants the investigation to come to a successful conclusion."

Federal prosecutors are seeking to determine who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. officer, to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak for a column he wrote last summer. Disclosure of the identity of an undercover officer for the Central Intelligence Agency can be a federal crime.

It was unclear on Wednesday night why Mr. Bush waited until what appears to be the last stages of the investigation into the leak before he consulted with a lawyer. One administration official speculated that the president must have had some indication that investigators now want to question him.

The case unfolded after Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, publicly questioned the president's assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium in Africa. Mr. Wilson's statements led to a White House admission that the evidence behind the statement was insufficient, and probably wrong, and that the C.I.A. had successfully cautioned the White House against making such statements in another speech the president had given in the fall of 2002.

Mr. Wilson and some Democrats have charged that the White House leaked Ms. Plame's identity as a way of retaliating against Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Bush's decision to consider hiring his own lawyer in the case surprised many law enforcement officials and political figures who have followed the politically charged case for months.

While Mr. Wilson has mentioned several prominent White House advisers - including Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby and Elliott Abrams - as possible sources of the leak, the president himself has not been seen as a potential target of the investigation.

He could, however, become a witness if prosecutors believe he had information about the events that led to the disclosure of Ms. Plame's name or if he had personal records that might aid in the inquiry.

Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago who is acting as a special counsel in the investigation, declined to comment on the developments.

Mr. Sharp, who represented Gen. Richard V. Secord of the Air Force in the Iran-contra affair but is not widely known in Washington legal circles, could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.

The Justice Department named Mr. Fitzgerald to lead the investigation last December when Attorney General John Ashcroft withdrew from oversight of the case after Democrats charged for months that his close ties to the White House posed a conflict of interest.

The developments on Wednesday came at a time when Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation has shown signs of movement. The grand jury recently subpoenaed journalists from NBC and Time magazine to testify about the leak - a move that lawyers for the journalists said they would fight. Mr. Fitzgerald has kept a tight seal on the progress of his investigation, and legal observers are split over whether the subpoenas signal that he may be nearing an indictment or whether the investigation has hit a wall and he is seeking information from reporters as a last resort.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the calls for an aggressive investigation into the leak, said after word of Mr. Bush's legal consultation: "I've always said we should find the wrongdoers no matter who is implicated. I have confidence that Special Counsel Fitzgerald will follow the path no matter where it leads."

By Eric Lichtblau and David E. Sanger

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/po...03leak.html?hp

[tambourine-man]

Wonder how many times he'll 'plead the fifth'?

[Heathcliff]

I guess James Baker III was "unavailable".