Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
October 1, 2003 -- Page: S12220

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I asked for the leader time because I wish to respond to some of the remarks I heard on the floor earlier regarding the CIA leaks.

Mr. President, every one of us in this country would be very concerned about a leak regarding someone who was undercover and operating for the CIA, and we would want to get to the bottom of the issue if there were a leak. In fact, that is exactly what is happening. But I think it has been distorted and I think it has been blown way out of proportion before we really know the facts. So I want to set the record straight on a few issues.

First of all, many people on the other side are asking for a special counsel. Right now, the FBI is investigating this as a routine leak. The CIA Director, George Tenet, according to Bob Novak, did not request the investigation separately in some major way. The CIA Director was not involved because this is in fact routine.

According to Bob Novak, any leak of classified information is routinely passed by the CIA to the Justice Department, averaging one a week. This investigative request was made in July, shortly after the original column was published. This was a routine investigation of something that appeared to be a leak and which may be a leak. The investigation has been ongoing since July. I think it is certainly premature to start making this a political issue, talking about a special counsel, when we don't even know the facts yet.

Bob Novak wrote a subsequent column that appeared today in the Washington Post. I think it is very important because it was his original column that outed the woman who was a CIA employee. He says very clearly, first: I did not receive a planned leak. Now, it has been accused on television shows across America that the White House somehow leaked information about a CIA operative to the press.

The man who wrote the story said:

I did not receive a planned leak. Secondly, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else and, third, it was not much of a secret.

According to him, this has been well known around Washington and, in fact, was even reported in the National Review Online from a nongovernmental source before Mr. Novak's column appeared.

Mr. Novak said an administration official told him this information but not the White House. He says this did not come from the White House.

I think it is very important that we tone down the rhetoric on this issue. It is an issue that should be investigated. It is being investigated. The President has said he wants it to be investigated. He has said it is important to him that it be investigated. He wants everyone in the White House to be fully cooperative, and the author of the story says no one in the White House was involved. So I think we need to tone it down.