timmmmmmmmmmmmmmay!!!!!

By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago

A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.

The NIE is a report prepared by the head of the nation's intelligence operations for high-level government officials, up to and including the president. Portions of NIEs are sometimes declassified and made public. It is unclear whether that happened in this instance.

In a Jan. 23 letter to Libby's lawyers, Fitzgerald said Libby also testified before the grand jury that he caused at least one other government official to discuss an intelligence estimate with reporters in July 2003.

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors," Fitzgerald wrote.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment. "Our policy is that we are not going to discuss this when it's an ongoing legal proceeding," he said.

William Jeffress, Libby's lawyer, said, "There is no truth at all" to suggestions that Libby would try to shift blame to his superiors as a defense against the charges.

Libby, 55, was indicted late last year on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he subsequently told reporters. He is not charged with leaking classified information from an intelligence estimate report.

Plame's identity was published in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium in Niger. The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports.

Wilson's revelations cast doubt on President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration's key justifications for going to war in Iraq.

On Thursday, Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said Cheney should take responsibility if he authorized Libby to share classified information with reporters.

"These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interests being placed above national security," Kennedy said. "The vice president's vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious. If he used classified information to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility."

In the summer of 2003, White House officials — including Libby — were frustrated that the media were incorrectly reporting that Cheney had sent Wilson to Niger and had received a report of his findings in Africa before the war in Iraq had begun.

In an effort to counter those reports, Libby and other White House officials sought information from the CIA regarding Wilson and how his trip to Niger came about, according to court records.

Fitzgerald, in his letter to Libby's lawyers, said he plans to use Libby's grand jury testimony to support evidence pertaining to the White House aide's meeting with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

During the meeting with Miller on July 8, Libby also discussed Plame, Fitzgerald said. "Our anticipated basis for offering such evidence is that such facts are inextricably intertwined with the narrative of the events of spring 2003, as Libby's testimony itself makes plain," the prosecutor wrote.

Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss her source.

Washington -- The Bush administration offered support Friday to protesters angry over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published in Europe, saying of the cartoons, "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive."

Meanwhile, the Muslim world erupted in anger. Streets in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, the Palestinian territories and Malaysia were filled with demonstrators calling for boycotts of European goods and burning the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared. Sermons at Friday prayer services across the Muslim world decried the caricatures.

"What the Europeans have done in their newspapers is a deliberate provocation to 1 billion Muslims around the world," Mohammed Hussein told about 500 worshipers in his sermon at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam. "This cannot be tolerated."

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, reading the U.S. government's statement on the controversy, said, "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," which are routinely published in the Arab press, "as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

The United States has been trying to improve its image in the Arab world, badly damaged by the Iraq war and U.S. support for Israel.

Still, the United States defended the right of the Danish and French newspapers to publish the cartoons. "We vigorously defend the right of individuals to express points of view," McCormack added.

The cartoons have outraged Muslims as being provocative and anti-Muslim, while many Europeans have defended their publication under the right to free speech.

Since being published in Denmark in September, they have been reprinted in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary, as well as in Jordan. They are also on the Internet. Editors at the papers in France and Jordan were fired after the cartoons appeared in their publications.

Muslims consider it blasphemous to print any image of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, let alone a cartoon that ridicules him.

One cartoon depicts Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb. Another shows him at the gates of heaven, arms raised, saying, "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins." A third has devil's horns emerging from his turban.

Although the first publication in September provoked little response, anger has grown in the last week, seemingly fueled by resentment at perceived mistreatment. When 10,000 Muslims across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia were asked to describe in their own words what Western societies could do to improve relations with the Muslim world, the most frequent reply was that they should "respect Islam, stop treating us like we're inferior, stop degrading Muslims in your media," according to a summary of a yet-unpublished Gallup poll, which was obtained by The Chronicle. The poll was taken last year.

Protests took place in some countries whose rulers are considered pro-American. Pakistan's parliament voted to denounce the publication of the cartoons. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for the firing of newspaper editors who approved publication of the cartoons.

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, as many as 100 members of the radical Islamic Defenders Front stormed into an office tower housing the Danish Embassy on Friday morning, demanding an apology. Protesters pelted the building with rotten eggs and tomatoes, damaged furniture in the lobby and pulled down a pair of Danish flags, burning one and shredding the other.

For the Bush administration, talking about the uproar represented a delicate balancing act. A central tenet of the administration's foreign policy is the promotion of democracy and human rights, including free speech and freedom of the press, in countries where they are lacking. But a core mission of its public diplomacy is to emphasize respect for Islam in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We strongly denounce and condemn" the caricatures, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, said in a statement on his Web site.

But he also suggested that extremists responsible for suicide attacks and acts of terrorism were partly responsible for tarnishing the image of Islam. "Enemies have exploited this ... to spread their poison and revive their old hatreds with new methods and mechanisms," al-Sistani said.

In France, where rioting broke out last year among its sizable Muslim population, President Jacques Chirac released a statement Friday defending free speech but appealing "to all to show the greatest spirit of responsibility, of respect and of good measure to avoid anything that could hurt other people's beliefs."

In Gaza, a pamphlet released by gunmen at the European Union office threatened harm to churches.

Hamas leaders, showing how their role has changed since their election success last week, quickly and publicly reacted to calm fears of Gaza's small Christian population, only 3,000 people. On Thursday, a top Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, visited the only Catholic church in Gaza to condemn any threats against Christians.

"He said he is protecting us not because he is Hamas," said the Rev. Manuel Musallam of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church, who said he has long and friendly relations with Hamas. "But he is protecting Christians and our institutions as the state of Palestine and as a government."

Chronicle staff writer Anna Badkhen and Chronicle news services contributed to this report.

Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/04/MNGOSH2TSD1.DTL