Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for efforts to mislead the public about the role of White House aides in leaking the identity of a CIA operative. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recount the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Monday. "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."

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Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the leak was retribution for his public criticism of the Iraq war. The accusation dogged the administration and made Plame a cause celebre among many Democrats.

McClellan's book, "What Happened," isn't due out until April, and the excerpt released Monday was merely a teaser. It doesn't get into detail about how Bush and Cheney were involved or reveal what happened behind the scenes.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

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.

A Daily News photographer captured the 3-by-5 foot Dixie flag affixed to a door in the garage of the Clove Valley Gun and Rod Club in upstate Union Vale, N.Y. "It's appalling for the VP to be at a private club displaying the flag of lynching, hate and murder," said the Rev. Al Sharpton. "It's the epitome of an insult." Sharpton demanded Cheney distance himself from the exclusive club where the Stars and Bars was flown, and said he might hold a prayer vigil there. Club officials threatened a reporter with arrest when he sought comment. The flag fiasco is especially upsetting because blacks have recently been subjected to an upsurge of racial threats, including nooses left in Jena, La., and Columbia University, he said.

"This is an outrage - he ought to leave immediately," Sharpton told The News. "He ought to apologize to the American people for being there in the first place." "That flag brings back painful memories of the old, old South," said Elouise Maxey, 59, president of the Northern Dutchess County branch of the NAACP. "I'm disappointed that he would go." Cheney spokeswoman Lee Anne McBride said Cheney did not know anything about the controversy. "The VP did not see the flag and neither did anyone on staff," said McBride.

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"As long as he doesn't shoot somebody in the a--," Bill Tryon, 48, said he was fine with Cheney's visit. Tryon lives in the area. There was no repeat of last year's snafu, when Cheney shot an old pal in the face during a quail hunt in south Texas. "It should be water under the bridge," said Ralph Mondello, who is running for a spot on the local town council.

The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney told an agency within the National Archives that for purposes of securing classified information, the Vice President's office is not an 'entity within the executive branch' according to a letter released Thursday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, you exempted the Office of the Vice President from the presidential executive order that establishes a uniform, government-wide system for safeguarding classified national security information," Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the Committee's chairman, wrote in a letter to Cheney. "Your decision to exempt your office from the President's order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk. It is also hard to understand given the history of security breaches involving officials in your office."

Waxman noted that Cheney's office had declared itself not affected by an executive order amended by President George W. Bush in 2003 regarding classification and declassification of government materials.

"Your position was that your office 'does not believe it is included in the definition of 'agency' as set forth in the Order' and 'does not consider itself an 'entity within the executive branch' that comes into the possession of classified information,'" a National Archives official claims Cheney chief of staff David Addington wrote to him.

The Vice President's office's refusal to comply with the executive order and the National Archives's request prompted the National Archives to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office. But the Justice Department has not followed up on the Archives's request.

Following Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the US government, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) plans to introduce an amendment to the the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to cut funding for Cheney's office.

The amendment to the bill that sets the funding for the executive branch will be considered next week in the House of Representatives.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch," said Emanuel in a statement released to RAW STORY. "However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments."

Many months ago it became obvious to all but the most ideologically blinkered that America is losing the war launched to deal with a chimeric problem (an arsenal of WMD) and to achieve a delusory goal (a democracy that would inspire emulation, transforming the region). Last week the president retired his mantra "stay the course" because it does not do justice to the nimbleness and subtlety of U.S. tactics for winning the war.

A surreal and ultimately disgusting facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco's architects acknowledge that fact. Iraq's civil war has been raging for more than a year; so has the Washington debate about whether it is what it is.

In a recent interview with Vice President Cheney, Time magazine asked, "If you had to take back any one thing you'd said about Iraq, what would it be?" Selecting from what one hopes is a very long list, Cheney replied: "I thought that the elections that we went through in '05 would have had a bigger impact on the level of violence than they have ... I thought we were over the hump in terms of violence. I think that was premature."

He thinks so? Clearly, and weirdly, he implies that the elections had some positive impact on the level of violence. Worse, in the full transcript of the interview posted online he said the big impact he expected from the elections "hasn't happened yet." "Yet"? Doggedness can be admirable, but this is clinical.

The U.S. alleges he [Libby] learned about Plame from one of the CIA officials when he went after dirt on her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson shattered a pillar of President Bush's rationale for war - that Iraq was seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Both CIA officials - including a top architect of the 2003 Iraq invasion - discussed Plame with Libby a month before columnist Robert Novak blew her cover in July 2003, prosecutors charge. Libby has said journalists told him about Plame - not Cheney or the six witnesses named so far by prosecutors.

Until recently, the CIA officials' identities were kept secret by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who did not name them in Libby's October indictment. But subsequent documents allege Libby asked top CIA official Robert Grenier on June 11 why the agency sent Wilson to Niger to see if Iraq tried to buy uranium. Grenier replied that Plame was an agent and "believed responsible" for arranging her husband's trip. The other official was Craig Schmall, a CIA briefer whom Libby complained to about the Wilson trip on June 14, court files allege. Grenier, the CIA's station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan, helped stage the successful U.S. attack on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

He then joined the CIA's Iraq Issue Group, hatching operational plans for invading Iraq. "Bob had to go to lots of White House meetings in the runup to the war," said one colleague. The source expressed surprise that Grenier would have discussed Plame with Libby. This year, as CIA Counterterrorist Center chief, Grenier oversaw the failed missile strike aimed at Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Shortly afterward, Grenier was demoted. But Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, said Grenier lost his job over his "concerns about aggressive interrogations [of terrorist detainees] at secret sites."

Peter Banko, the hospital administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial, said Harry Whittington had the heart attack early Tuesday while being evaluated.

He said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a birdshot pellet, and doctors performed a cardiac catheterization. Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week. Whittington, a prominent Republican attorney from Austin, was accidentally sprayed with shotgun pellets when Cheney was aiming for a quail Saturday. Whittington had initially been placed in intensive care. He had been moved to a "step-down unit" Monday after doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

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The wildlife department issued a report Monday that found the main factor contributing to the accident was a "hunter's judgment factor." No other secondary factors were found to have played a role.

The shooting was first reported by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. The vice president's office did not disclose the accident until nearly 24 hours after it happened. Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail. Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey. Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said. "The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

The vice president is an iPod fan, and keeping it charged is a priority for his staff. Normally that isn't an issue, even when he's flying around the world. Air Force II is equipped with outlets in each row of seats. But when Dick Cheney was traveling home overnight Wednesday from his diplomatic mission, most of the outlets went on the fritz.

Working passengers began lining up their laptops to share the power from a couple of working outlets — particularly the reporters who urgently needed to prepare their articles to transmit during a quick refueling stop in England.

But when Cheney said his iPod needed to be recharged, it took precedent above all else and dominated one precious outlet for several hours. The vice president's press staff intervened so a reporter could use the outlet for 15 minutes to charge a dead laptop, but then the digital music device was plugged back in. That way, Cheney got his press coverage and his music, too

Vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up America's war of words with North Korea yesterday by calling it a police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people.

His words came just 48 hours after the Pentagon announced that it was sending 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea, a US ally, for an undetermined period. The aircraft crews, trained to seek out targets with precision weapons, needed to familiarise themselves with the Korean terrain, the air force said.

Speaking to CNN in an interview broadcast last night, Mr. Cheney described North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, as "one of the world's more irresponsible leaders."

Mr. Cheney went on to accuse Kim of running "a police state" and of maintaining one of the most heavily militarised societies in the world. He said most North Koreans lived "in abject poverty and stages of malnutrition". The statement appeared to be a reference to the North Korean famine, widely blamed on the country's communist elite, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The vice-president continued: "He doesn't take care of his people at all, and he obviously wants to throw his weight around and become a nuclear power."

Worried about a political deadlock in Iraq and a spike in mayhem from an emboldened insurgency, the Bush administration has pressed Iraqi leaders in recent days to end their stalemate over forming a new government, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney personally exhorting top Kurdish and Shiite politicians to come together.

The White House pressure, reported by Iraqi officials in Baghdad and an American official in Washington on Sunday, was a change in the administration's hands-off approach to Iraqi politics. The change was disclosed as insurgents unleashed a devastating technique, with twin double bombings at a police academy in Tikrit and an ice cream parlor in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad that killed 21 and wounded scores more.

Ms. Rice on Friday telephoned Iraq's new president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, to urge him to complete the government "as soon as they could" and "to get a status of where things were," a senior State Department official in Washington said Sunday. The official stressed that Ms. Rice did not tell Mr. Talabani how to form a government, just that the process needed to be concluded.