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Libby was frustrated and angry, Miller testified, about "selective leaking" by the CIA and other agencies to "distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments." Miller says Libby believed the "selective leaks" from the CIA were an attempt to "shift blame to the White House" and were part of a "perverted war" over the war in Iraq.

This is the real story of the CIA leak case. We have one or more intelligence agencies planting false stories with the press in order to damage the Bush administration. They wanted to divert attention from the fact that the CIA had gotten the facts wrong about Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Taking issue with the President's charge in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, Wilson had written a column for the Times doubting that such a transaction had taken place. On other occasions Wilson said he even doubted the claim that Iraq was interested in obtaining uranium from Niger. Miller says that Libby told her that the Wilson essay "was inaccurate." Miller adds, "Mr. Libby then proceeded through a lengthy and sharp critique of Mr. Wilson and what Mr. Libby viewed as the CIA's backpedaling on the intelligence leading to war. According to my notes, he began with a chronology of what he described as credible evidence of Iraq's efforts to procure uranium. As I told Mr. Fitzgerald and the grand jury, Mr. Libby alluded to the existence of two intelligence reports about Iraq's uranium procurement efforts. One report dated from February 2002. The other indicated that Iraq was seeking a broad trade relationship with Niger in 1999, a relationship that he said Niger officials had interpreted as an effort by Iraq to obtain uranium."

What's more, Miller says, "My notes indicate that Mr. Libby told me the report on the 1999 delegation had been attributed to Joe Wilson."

In other words, Wilson was denying something that he had actually confirmed. In fact, there had been an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Africa. No wonder Libby was upset with Wilson's article in the Times and the CIA's role in arranging his trip. Libby had every reason to believe there was a campaign underway to undermine the Bush administration and he must have been desperate to counter it. So desperate that he would talk to Judith Miller and other reporters. That was a big mistake.

In terms of more evidence of an Iraq-uranium link, Miller says that Libby "also cited a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, produced by American intelligence agencies in October 2002, which he said had firmly concluded that Iraq was seeking uranium."

The situation was that the administration had evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, based on Wilson and other sources, and yet Wilson was using the Times and other outlets to deny it. Libby, Rove and other administration officials had every reason to conclude that Wilson was part of an effort by some in the CIA to deliberately undermine the Bush administration's Iraq policy. But other than Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, we still don't know the names of those CIA officials. They can apparently operate under the cover of anonymity, legal or otherwise. They are media "sources," now on the verge of getting more protection from the Senate under a media shield law.

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