House Oversight Panel: Bush's Use Of Executive Privilege "Unprecedented"

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - The House Oversight Committee said Tuesday that President George W. Bush's use of executive privilege in Congress' investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity was "unprecedented and inappropriate."

Committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and ranking minority member Tom Davis (R-VA) said in a bipartisan report that Bush made a "legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege" when he withheld FBI reports of interviews with Vice President Dick Cheney. The panel has been trying for nearly a year to gain access to documents relating to the leak of Valerie Plame's employment as a CIA operative.

Bush previously invoked executive privilege to avoid submitting the interview reports of Cheney. His action was in response to a threat from Waxman to cite Attorney General Michael Mukasey for contempt.

Waxman issued Mukasey a subpoena on June 16 for records in the Plame investigation, specifically reports of interviews with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as unedited versions of interviews with former Vice President chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson responded on June 24, a day after the subpoena's deadline, with a letter to Waxman saying, "It is settled as a matter of constitutional law... that the communications of the President and the Vice President with their staffs relating to official Executive Branch activities lie at the absolute core of executive privilege.

Waxman then dropped his request for reports of interviews with the president but insisted that records of Cheney's interviews are vital to his inquiry.

The leak of Plame's identity in 2003 resulted in a federal probe and Libby's conviction for perjury and obstruction of justice in March 2007. Before the leak, Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of manipulating prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.