Bush

CHICAGO — President Bush said Tuesday that he welcomed a Justice Department investigation into whether White House officials illegally disclosed the identity of a CIA agent in an effort to discredit or punish her husband, an administration critic.

Bush also dismissed calls by Democrats for the appointment of a special counsel to look into the matter. Administration critics argued that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft is too partisan to preside over an impartial investigation.

On a campaign fund-raising trip through the Midwest, Bush said he is “absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job.”

“I want to know the truth,” Bush said. “If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.”

The remarks were the president’s first on the burgeoning scandal, which burst into view over the weekend when it was disclosed that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate whether senior administration officials deliberately unmasked a CIA agent married to former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of Bush’s handling of intelligence before the war in Iraq.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that it was conducting a formal investigation into who leaked the agent’s identity to conservative columnist Robert Novak, an apparent violation of a 1982 law designed to protect intelligence operatives.

The allegations are serious; exposing the identity of a CIA operative is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And the charges have handed Democrats a juicy political opportunity, enabling them to accuse the hawkish Bush administration of playing fast and loose with national security.

In the Senate, a resolution sponsored by about two dozen Democrats was introduced Tuesday calling for a “fair, thorough and independent investigation into a national security breach.”

Democrats took to the Senate floor to liken the leak to President Richard Nixon’s enemies list and to “kneecapping” the CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the administration’s policies.

“This is not just a leak; this is a crime, plain and simple,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.

The politically charged nature of the case was underscored Tuesday when Wilson, who has portrayed himself as defending the CIA career of his wife, Valerie Plame, confirmed on CNBC that he has been in contact with a number of Democratic campaigns, in particular that of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). Wilson said he had donated money to Kerry’s presidential campaign and is considering endorsing him, although he said he also had contributed to the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000.

Wilson has agreed to meet today with Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Justice officials said they weren’t ruling out the possibility of acceding to the demands for a special counsel. Some former prosecutors said they believed the facts of the case were so murky that appointing a special counsel seemed premature.

For now, the politically delicate task falls to a low-profile group of Justice professionals. The team is headed up by John Dion, chief of the counterespionage section of the department’s criminal section, a 20-year spy catcher who has won department awards during Republican and Democratic administrations for his work investigating turncoats and security breaches.

“John is a very aggressive prosecutor who will call it as he sees it,” said Eric Dubelier, a Washington lawyer and former federal prosecutor who worked with Dion several years ago. “He will make a decision based on the facts and the law. Then, the question will be, ‘Who is the final arbiter?’ ”

But some members of Congress said there was already evidence that the investigation was going off-track.

They cite a heads-up the Justice Department gave the White House on Monday night that it had decided to launch a formal investigation, and that it would be sending out a letter Tuesday morning explaining which documents it wanted preserved.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the White House counsel’s office asked whether staff should be notified immediately; the Justice officials said it could wait until the next morning.

McClellan rebuffed a question asking whether the evening phone call could be seen as advance warning, calling it a “silly suggestion.”

Schumer said the notice created an opportunity for mischief, essentially giving White House staff an opportunity overnight to destroy evidence.

“If there were a special counsel, it is extremely doubtful that the White House would have been allowed to delay the request to preserve documents and other evidence,” Schumer said. “After all, every good prosecutor knows that any delay could give a culprit time to destroy the evidence.”

Legal experts said the White House probably was already obliged under the law to preserve documents, given the widespread publicity the case had generated over the weekend. Others said they thought the White House should have acted more aggressively in ensuring that the documents be preserved.

“I think a conscientious lawyer would have done it immediately. We are not dealing with a rural D.A.’s office,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics specialist at New York University law school. Gillers said he thought that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales’ own preservation order was “incredibly vague” and might have confused some employees.

Later Tuesday, Gonzalez expanded his notification to White House staff members by specifying that they preserve records of any contacts with members of the news media, including columnist Novak and Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce.

Phelps and Royce were apparently named because a story they wrote about Novak’s column in July disclosed that Plame was an undercover operative, which Novak’s column didn’t say.

Their story also quoted Novak as saying that an administration official had sought him out with the information about Plame. Novak now tells it differently, saying that the information emerged in an interview that he requested with the administration official. The Newsday account suggests a more aggressive role by the unidentified leaker.

Under Justice Department regulations, Ashcroft has full discretion in whether to appoint a special counsel, unlike the post-Watergate independent counsel statute, which ascribed that authority to a panel of judges. Congress allowed the counsel statute to expire in 1999 amid recriminations over the expense and scope of the Whitewater investigations.

In its place, then-Atty. Gen. Janet Reno enacted guidelines for when the department should veer from its normal rules in cases where officials have conflicts of interest. Those rules remain in effect.

“The attorney general is absolutely free to structure any special investigative appointment within the Department of Justice that he wishes. That has been done repeatedly as needed throughout history,” said John Barrett, a law professor at St. John’s University law school in New York, and a former member of the independent counsel team that investigated the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration.

Ashcroft himself has exercised the prerogative, setting up a special task force to scrutinize Enron after recusing himself from the investigation because he had once taken campaign contributions from the fallen energy trader.

Barrett said even if the independent counsel law were still in effect, the investigation would be going through a sorting-out process, trying to zero in on suspects, before deciding whether a conflict existed warranting an outside prosecutor.

“Even in the independent counsel model, the preliminary work was to be done by the Department of Justice. Someone has to do the initial spade work,” he said.

On Capitol Hill, such legal distinctions were buried under political rhetoric from both sides.

“If we need an independent counsel to investigate a private real estate deal,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton’s and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Whitewater land venture, “certainly a breach of national security deserves the same level of scrutiny.”

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both Democrats, were among those supporting calls for an outside counsel. Feinstein, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: “Clearly, a well-respected special counsel from the outside — Democrat or Republican — is the only option to ensure a fair and thorough investigation that will have the confidence of the American people.”

But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said of the Democrats’ call for a special counsel: “Surprise, surprise.”

DeLay said the appointment of a special counsel “makes no sense.”

“You have special counsels if you think the administration is trying to cover up or obstruct justice,” he said. “The White House is very upset about this … They’re trying to get to the bottom of this.”

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) ridiculed Democrats’ call for an outside counsel, noting they were among critics of the independent counsel statute in the past.

“We killed the independent counsel because it was used for politics by both sides of the aisle,” Santorum said.

Times staff writer Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this report. Reynolds reported from Chicago and Schmitt from Washington.

WASHINGTON — President Bush, in a surprise announcement, disclosed Friday that he will seek a $500-million increase in government funding next year for Head Start, a 25-year-old program intended to help disadvantaged youngsters prepare for elementary school.

Bush said the proposed 36% jump in federal spending is intended to expand the program–one of the few remaining elements of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty–so it can reach 70% of the disadvantaged 4-year-olds in the nation.

Elsewhere in the draft $1.23-trillion federal budget for the fiscal year that begins next Oct. 1, Bush is expected to propose $37 billion in spending cuts and revenue increases to meet a congressionally mandated deficit-reduction target of $64 billion next year.

The budget–Bush’s first full-scale statement of his priorities for the federal government–will include a renewed call for a lower capital gains tax rate, tax credits for adoptions and for child care, and a proposed “family savings account” that would allow people to accumulate tax-free earnings on up to $5,000 put away each year.

Although the package contains no general tax hikes, it is expected to include as much as $12 billion in various revenue increases that would take money out of people’s pockets, including $5 billion in proposed user fees.

The plan calls for further cuts in Pentagon spending after adjusting for inflation, but Congress is expected to demand even deeper savings. Bush’s spending blueprint will call for modest savings of about $3.8 billion from holding defense outlays to $292 billion next year, compared to the $286 billion total for this fiscal year.

Deputy Defense Secretary Donald J. Atwood, who briefed congressional staff members Friday, called the Pentagon’s budget request “realistic” and said its efforts to scale back its budget in the next five years deserve support.

In tentative spending plans for the next five years, the Pentagon has proposed to reduce its budget by 2% annually after accounting for inflation, which would allow only a gradual rise from $292 billion next year to $311.8 billion in fiscal 1995.

Congressional sources said that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had slated a long list of relatively small weapons and ordnance programs for termination. None of the Pentagon’s most costly programs, including the B-2 Stealth bomber–for which $5.5 billion will be sought in 1991–were killed or scaled back significantly.

Cheney is certain to raise hackles on Capitol Hill with decisions not to seek additional funds for production or development of the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and the Navy F-14 fighter jet. The Pentagon last year proposed to terminate both programs, prompting angry lawmakers to restore some funds to keep the programs alive.

The budget also contains about $5 billion in proposed Medicare savings, along with another $2.5 billion from yet another Administration attempt to require state and local workers to pay for Medicare coverage.

Altogether, about 18 or 19 programs would be terminated.

On the other side of the ledger, Bush is expected to call for increased spending on the environment, particularly a stepped-up program to combat global warming, and a boost in spending on space, drug enforcement and treatment, and AIDS research and prevention.

The overall education budget would rise by $500 million, but not enough to keep up with inflation. As a result, some college students would lose their eligibility for Pell Grants, and others would be required to accept smaller stipends.

The 1,592-page budget document was in its final press run on Friday, said Donna Alexander, a spokeswoman for the Government Printing Office. Some 24,000 of the blue-jacketed documents are being printed, and they will go on sale Monday at government book shops for $38 each.

Bush, his aides, and other government officials have carefully disclosed most of the key elements on his agenda this year. He will be free in the State of the Union address Wednesday evening to focus on the overall direction he would like to see the country take this year, rather than having to present a “laundry list” of problems and programs.

In disclosing the Head Start funding proposal to an audience of adopted children and parents taking part in a White House program on adoption, Bush said he would seek “the largest increase ever–half a billion additional dollars–for Head Start.”

“This new funding will increase the Head Start enrollment to 667,000 children and bring us to the point where we can reach 70% of this nation’s disadvantaged 4-year-olds through Head Start,” he said.

Bush said “every American child with special needs, whether physical, emotional, or material, deserves the opportunity for a full and happy life.”

The increase is approximately 10 times as big as the additional amount sought for the program by the Department of Health and Human Services, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

The President’s announcement surprised advocates of assistance for children and Democratic politicians, with one Democratic political adviser remarking: “That’s smart politics.”

Bush, who said frequently during the 1988 political campaign that he wanted to become the “education” President, had come under increasing pressure to move toward that goal by increasing federal funding for a variety of education programs.

Such pressure emerged at the meeting Bush led at the University of Virginia last September, where he conferred with the nation’s governors on education needs across the country. Fitzwater said the Head Start proposal stemmed directly from that conference.

The Head Start program grew steadily during the Ronald Reagan Administration from about $800 million in 1981 to about $1.2 billion when he left office. In 1990, the Head Start program is receiving $1.386 billion. It provides early educational skills, health care and social counseling for preschool children from families living at or below the poverty level. Staff writer Melissa Healy contributed to this story.

TOKYO — There is in George Bush, as in many successful politicians, an element that is always on stage, an element of the eternal campaigner who responds with the instinctive gesture, sometimes incongruous and sometimes just right.

And so it was in Tokyo, notwithstanding the dreary mood of a rainy February afternoon, the solemnity of the state funeral of Emperor Hirohito and, on top of all that, the worrisome political problems posed by his troubled nomination of John Tower to be secretary of defense. Incongruity and the perfect touch, moments apart.

The funeral for the emperor who had reigned in wartime Japan was not a simple rite. It was a precisely staged ceremony of official mourning. The name of the man it memorialized brought back from fading memory the atrocities of World War II.

Arriving at the U.S. Embassy after this affair of state, the formally attired President flashed a thumbs-up sign–the simple gesture in incongruous contrast to the somber tenor of the occasion.

Moments later, he tossed aside a prepared address, delivered an off-the-cuff speech to a crowd of Americans at the embassy, and then spied a cluster of youngsters in the group. That gave him an idea.

Singling out the personal aide who accompanies him throughout his day, whether in Washington, Tokyo, or points in between, Bush said, “Tim McBride’s a good photographer.” With that, the President invited the children to hand McBride their cameras. They obliged, and he posed with each of them for pictures, McBride snapping away as the brief visit was stretched out by 15 minutes.

“It was like a campaign stop,” said the senior White House official who recounted the story, satisfied with his boss’ spontaneous, crowd-pleasing gesture.

Bush’s presidential campaign was marked in its final months by its careful control of each week’s agenda. No matter how Michael S. Dukakis would attack, Bush steadfastly kept to his script, making sure that the focus remained wherever he shined his light. Thus, Willie Horton and the American flag became the enduring symbols of the autumn.

In the opening days of the Bush Administration, however, the light has occasionally flickered. Its beam has been cast with less certainty, as outside events have distracted public attention from the President’s message. And nowhere has that become more evident than here in Tokyo.

Bush was invited to Japan to attend the Hirohito funeral. He took advantage of the ceremony to schedule individual meetings with nearly two dozen other leaders from countries large and small, squeezing 17 into a 30-hour period.

Much as Bush threw open the doors of the White House on the morning after his inauguration to a symbolic sampling of the American populace, he opened the Spanish-style residence of the U.S. ambassador to a representation of the world leadership–prime ministers and presidents and even a king (Baudouin I of Belgium).

One after another, they arrived in the same room in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur received Hirohito in September, 1945, a month after the end of World War II.

And with time running out, the President arranged a dinner Friday with one more visitor to Tokyo–meeting King Juan Carlos I of Spain, in a hotel restaurant.

But it was the Tower- mondai , as the Tower problem is called here, that riveted the attention of the White House staff and most of the 80 or so American reporters who accompanied Bush to Tokyo when they woke up Friday morning to the news that the Senate Armed Services Committee was about to reject the nomination.

Those who struggled to keep track of the funeral on large television screens in the White House press room at the Okura Hotel were swimming upstream: The tide Friday was swelled by a torrent of stories bearing Tokyo datelines and they were all about Tower.

And what about the President’s daylong effort to review the issues of the day with such foreign leaders as Presidents Richard von Weizsaecker of West Germany, Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan?

What about evolving East-West relations, Afghanistan and Iran, U.S. support for President Aquino? All became afterthoughts.

The White House took particular pains not to offend Japanese sensitivities on a day of mourning.

Tokyo had instructed dignitaries on proper funeral attire, down to the black handkerchief in the pocket of the rented morning coat Bush brought from Washington.

Communications went back and forth between Tokyo and Washington, for example, on one particular point of concern: Barbara Bush’s request to wear her trademark triple string of fake pearls.

(Mrs. Bush’s identification with fake pearls has become so well known that it came as a surprise to some aides when she made a quick shopping stop after the funeral and purchased real Japanese pearls–a double-strand bracelet, with a silver clasp. Mrs. Bush herself was surprised when the jeweler refused to take a personal check. So she cashed her check–about $200–with U.S. Embassy personnel and paid in cash.)

The Japanese said pearls would not be suitable at the funeral. But after a time, this difficult decision was reversed. It seems that the pearls–artificial or otherwise–would be permissible, because pearls are, in the Japanese view, “the tears of the oyster.”

Times staff writer Betty Cuniberti contributed to this story.