Patrick Fitzgerald: Leakgate Filing was False

In a move that raises serious questions about his conduct of the Leakgate probe, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald now admits he was wrong to publicly allege last week that Vice President Dick Cheney deliberately tried to mislead reporters about prewar Iraq intelligence.

In a much ballyhooed filing with the court, Fitzgerald had claimed that Cheney told Leakgate defendant Lewis Libby to tell New York Times reporter Judith Miller that one of the "key" findings of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was "vigorously trying to procure" uranium before the war.

However, in a letter yesterday, Fitzgerald advised Leakgate Judge Reggie Walton that his April 5 filing was flat out wrong.

"We are writing to correct a sentence," Fitzgerald confessed, before explaining that the following statement in his filing had no basis in fact: "Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

Instead, Fitzgerald told the judge he wants to withdraw the bogus claim, and revise his filing to read:

"Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that the NIE stated that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium."

The New York Sun, which obtained a copy of Fitzgerald's letter late last night, notes today:

"The now-withdrawn assertion that Mr. Libby was ordered to tell a reporter that a secondary and disputed finding in the report was, in fact, a 'key judgment' was featured in the second paragraph of a front-page New York Times story on Sunday arguing that the leak to Ms. Miller was skewed."

Fitzgerald's bogus claim, the paper said, had been "noted prominently in some news accounts and contributed to an uproar that threw the White House into a tailspin last week."