US: US president George Bush approved a plan to channel covert aid to Iraqi parties and candidates in the run-up to the January elections, it was reported yesterday.
According to an article in the New Yorker magazine by the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the plan was designed to counter Iranian support for some Shia parties.
The plan was formally dropped in the face of opposition from Congress. But Hersh suggests that, despite the opposition, the White House went ahead with some funding.
This runs counter to the administration's insistence that the election would be free and unfettered. It also raises questions about the White House's praise of the election as a free expression of democracy.
The article alleges that the covert activities "were conducted by retired CIA officers and other non-government personnel, and used funds that were not necessarily appropriated by Congress".
In response to the article, Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the national security council, told the New York Times: "There were concerns about efforts by outsiders to influence the outcome of the Iraqi elections ... In the final analysis the president determined that we would not try - and did not try - to influence the outcome of the Iraqi election by covertly helping individual candidates for office." The statement does not address the question of covert funding for parties.
The leading Democratic member of the house intelligence committee, Jane Harman, told the New York Times: "If the administration did what is alleged, that would be a violation of the covert action requirements, and that would be deeply troubling." The president's national security team recommended last year that he sign a secret, formal authorisation, called a "finding", for covert action to influence the election.
Sources close to the White House told the New York Times that Mr Bush had signed or was about to sign the finding when Congress raised objections. He ultimately withdrew the decision, the sources said. - (Guardian service)
White House political aide Karl Rove was the first person to tell a Time magazine reporter that the wife of a prominent critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy was a CIA agent, the reporter said in an article yesterday.
Time correspondent Matthew Cooper said he told a grand jury last week that Mr Rove told him the woman worked at the "agency", or CIA, on weapons of mass destruction issues, and ended the call by saying: "I've already said too much."
The leak of the agent's identity has sparked a criminal investigation.
Cooper wrote that Mr Rove did not disclose the woman's name, Valerie Plame, but told him in July 2003 that information would be declassified that would cast doubt on the credibility of her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson.