House Seeks Access To Bush, Cheney Interviews

WASHINGTON — U.S. House of Representatives investigators pressed their case yesterday for access to interviews that a special counsel conducted with President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the outing of a former CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat of California, said in a letter sent to the Justice Department that the transcripts were needed to address what he described as troubling new questions about the role of the White House in the 2003 leak case.

Mr. Waxman cited disclosures in the recently published memoir of a former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. Mr. McClellan wrote that he felt he had been deceived into telling reporters that then-White House aides I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Karl Rove weren't involved in the episode. Aside from receiving assurances from the two men, Mr. McClellan described a meeting during which Messrs. Bush and Cheney decided to have Mr. McClellan issue a special statement clearing Libby of any involvement.

Libby was eventually tried and convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the case. Mr. Rove was never charged but acknowledged to investigators that he had spoken with reporters about Ms. Plame.

Ms. Plame's identity became public as the administration was scrambling to rebut criticism about the decision to invade Iraq from a former envoy, Joseph Wilson, in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Mr. Wilson had taken a CIA-backed trip to Africa that he said had disproved an administration claim that Iraq was seeking material there to make nuclear weapons. The claim was one of the grounds used to justify the invasion.

Mr. McClellan wrote that he did not believe that Mr. Bush knew that Libby and Mr. Rove were involved in the leaks. But he said that he could not be certain what Mr. Cheney knew; at the time, Libby was the chief of staff to the vice president.

Mr. Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter to Attorney General Mukasey yesterday, "It would be a major breach of trust if the vice president personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public."

Mr. Waxman first asked for access to White House interviews with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in December as part of an investigation into how the White House handled and investigated the leak. The Justice Department made available some, but not all, of the information, including redacted versions of interviews with Mr. Rove, Libby, and other senior officials.

Mr. Waxman said those transcripts revealed other information that needed to be pursued. One question, he said, is whether Mr. Cheney directed Libby to circulate the fact that Ms. Plame was employed by the CIA as part of a campaign to discredit Mr. Wilson and insinuate that his trip to Africa was the product of nepotism.

The White House referred calls for comment to the Justice Department.

"The Justice Department will review chairman Waxman's letter and respond as appropriate," spokesman Peter Carr said yesterday.