WASHINGTON

BUSH DEFLECTS QUESTIONS ON ROVE LEAK ROLE

President Bush passed up a chance yesterday to express confidence in senior aide Karl Rove in a political fight over a news leak that exposed a CIA officer’s identity. The lack of endorsement surprised some White House officials who had been told Mr. Bush would back his embattled friend. “This is a serious investigation,” Mr. Bush told reporters after a Cabinet meeting, with Mr. Rove sitting just behind him. “And it is very important for people not to prejudge the investigation based on media reports.”

Later in the day, White House spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that Mr. Rove did have Mr. Bush’s support. “As I indicated yesterday, every person who works here at the White House, including Karl Rove, has the confidence of the president,” Mr. McClellan said.

Mr. Bush said he would not discuss the matter further until a criminal investigation is finished. Across town, a federal grand jury heard more testimony in its probe into whether anyone in the administration illegally leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame in July 2003. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the administration’s rationale for invading Iraq, has said the leak was an attempt to discredit him.

– Associated Press

HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE APPROVES CHANGES IN PATRIOT ACT

The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee approved two Democratic provisions yesterday placing new controls over how the FBI monitors suspected terrorists under the Patriot Act.

In a move that committee aides said was unprecedented, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Republican of Michigan, opened the session to the public in a limited way by allowing one news organization – the Associated Press – to attend. Three other amendments that Democrats proposed failed, including one requiring Congress to reconsider 10 of the bill’s provisions in four years. The bill, which expanded the government’s intelligence-gathering powers after the attacks of September 11, 2001, would renew more than a dozen of the act’s provisions and make other changes.

Mr. Hoekstra said he opened the session because the public doesn’t often get to see how intelligence legislation is written. The meeting was held in the committee’s highly secure, and small, hearing room. “We are slowly inching our way forward” toward working more in the open, Mr. Hoekstra said after the two-hour session inside the cherry-walled room of the Capitol rarely seen by outsiders. Seventeen seals of intelligence community hang on one wall; an oversize world map on the other.

– Associated Press

OFFICIALS CONCERNED ABOUT SLEEPER CELLS

The possibility that terrorist “sleeper cells” are working undetected in America is near the top of worries for counterterrorism officials. This concern is brought home by evidence that seemingly ordinary young men carried out the London bombings.

Particularly unnerving is that last week’s bombings and those in Madrid last year suggest extremists already in place – in some cases, native-born citizens – can plan and execute an attack without attracting police attention.

The government raised the terror alert to high for mass transit systems after the London attacks. But officials said they have no credible, specific threats of an attack on America.

Even before the attacks on the London mass transit system, the FBI director, Robert Mueller, said the Madrid bombings “have heightened our concern regarding the possible role that indigenous Islamic extremists, already in the U.S., may play in future terrorist plots.”

Some experts caution that there are vast differences between Muslim communities in Europe and America. Still, Mr. Mueller told Congress in February, “I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing.”

– Associated Press

SOUTH

ISLAMIC SCHOLAR FROM VIRGINIA SENTENCED TO LIFE

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A prominent Islamic scholar who exhorted his followers after the terror attacks of September11, 2001, to join the Taliban and fight American troops was sentenced yesterday to life in prison.

Ali al-Timimi was convicted in April of soliciting treason, inducing others to aid the Taliban, and others to use firearms in violation of federal law.

“I will not admit guilt nor seek the court’s mercy. I do this simply because I am innocent,” the Fairfax cleric said in a 10-minute address before sentencing.

Attorneys Edward MacMahon and Alan Yamamoto argued al-Timimi was unfairly prejudiced at trial by inflammatory evidence of his religious beliefs – and accused prosecutors of misconduct for unfairly linking al-Timimi to Osama bin Laden. “We had to defend ourselves against Osama bin Laden in this trial,” Mr. MacMahon said yesterday. “Am I appalled by some of his views? Yes. But he is not a man of violence. He’s not a criminal.”

– Associated Press