Watch former Ambassador Wilson's interview with John Roberts.

(CNN) — The revelation by a former White House spokesman that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were "involved" in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson's identity shows how the White House "closed ranks" to protect themselves, her husband, Joe Wilson, said Wednesday.

The information — from an upcoming book by Scott McClellan — also shows how important it was to the administration to commute the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Wilson said on CNN's "American Morning."

"I think it now makes it very clear the extent to which the vice president was involved, which, of course, then makes it very clear how important to the vice president the commutation of Mr. Libby's sentence was," the former U.S. ambassador said.

Read the rest of this entry »

McClellan was White House press secretary at the time of the CIA leak investigation.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - White House spokesman Scott Stanzel denied accusations leveled at President Bush Tuesday by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan. The accusations flow from an excerpt released from McClellan’s forthcoming book where he blames the president and other high-ranking White House officials for prompting him to “unknowingly pass along false information” as it related to the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

“The President has not misled his spokespeople, nor would he,” Stanzel said in a statement.

–CNN White House Correspondent Suzanne Malveaux

Scott McClellan with President Bush in 2006.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The White House is denying a claim in a new book by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan that top administration officials — including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney — were involved in his "unknowingly" passing along false information about the involvement of Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Amid a burgeoning controversy about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is scheduled to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

Reacting to the release of an excerpt from McClellan's book, which was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the book's publisher, PublicAffairs, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said, "The president has not misled his spokespeople, nor would he."

Read the rest of this entry »

Watch CNN's Suzanne Malveaux report how Rove is defending his White House record.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – White House political adviser Karl Rove denied Sunday he confirmed the identity of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson for a 2003 newspaper column, but a reporter who testified in the leak probe called that "nonsense."

In comments to two Sunday talk shows, Rove disputed columnist and former CNN host Robert Novak's account of the leak. Novak, who disclosed Mrs. Wilson's identity in a July 2003 column, has said Rove confirmed her identity after another Bush administration official, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, first told him she worked for the CIA.

Rove told NBC's "Meet the Press" that, when Novak asked him about Mrs. Wilson, he told the columnist, "I've heard that, too." But he insisted that did not mean he had confirmed her identity.

"If a journalist had said to me, 'I'd like you to confirm this,' my answer would have been, 'I can't. I don't know. I've heard that, too,' " he said.

Mrs. Wilson's identity was disclosed shortly after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenged one of the claims underpinning the Bush administration's case for the U.S. invasion of Iraq — that Iraq had sought uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Wilson wrote that he had investigated the claim at the request of CIA officials and found it "highly doubtful" that any such transaction could have occurred, and he accused the Bush administration of having "twisted" the evidence for war.

Read the rest of this entry »