Questions arise for Bush.(Main)

Byline: RICHARD W. STEVENSON New York Times

WASHINGTON - His former secretary of state, most of his closest aides and a parade of other senior officials have testified to a grand jury. His political strategist has emerged as a central figure in the case, as has his vice president's chief of staff. His spokesman has taken a pounding for making statements about the matter that now appear not to be accurate.

For all that, it is still not clear what the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity will mean for President Bush. So far the disclosures about the involvement of Karl Rove, among others, have not exacted any substantial political price from the administration. And nobody has suggested that the investigation directly implicates the President. Yet Bush has yet to address some uncomfortable questions that he may not be able to evade indefinitely.

For starters, did Bush know in the fall of 2003, when he was telling the public that no one wanted to get to the bottom of the case more than he did, that Rove, his longtime strategist, senior adviser and alter ego, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, had touched on the CIA officer's identity in conversations with journalists before the officer's name became public? If not, when did they tell him, and what would the delay say in particular about his relationship with Rove, whose career and Bush's have been intertwined for decades?

Then there is the broader issue of whether Bush was aware of any effort by his aides to use the CIA officer's identity to undermine the standing of her husband, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting its prewar intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program.

For the last several weeks, Bush and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, have declined to address the leak in any substantive way, citing the continuing federal criminal investigation.

But Democrats see an opportunity to raise questions about Bush's credibility, and to reopen a debate about whether the White House leveled with the nation about the urgency of going to war with Iraq. And even some Republicans say Bush cannot assume he will escape from the investigation politically unscathed.

McClellan and other White House officials have declined to answer when asked if Rove or Libby had told the President by October 2003 that they had alluded to Joseph C. Wilson IV's identity months earlier in their conversations with journalists.

Bush's political opponents say the President is in a box. In their view, either Rove and Libby kept the President in the dark about their actions, making them appear evasive at a time when Bush was demanding that his staff cooperate fully with the investigation, or Rove and Libby had told the President and he was not forthcoming in his public statements about his knowledge of their roles.

"We know that Karl Rove, through Scott McClellan, did not tell Americans the truth," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.