Poll: Bush Ratings Hit New Low!

October. 6, 2005
New York
CBS

This CBS News Poll finds an American public increasingly pessimistic about the economy, the war in Iraq, the overall direction of the country, and the president. Americans' outlook for the economy is the worst it has been in four years. Most expect the price of gas to rise even further in the next few months.

A growing number of Americans want U.S. troops to leave Iraq as soon as possible, rather than stay the course, and the highest percentage ever thinks the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. When given a set of options for paying for rebuilding the hurricane-racked Gulf Coast, only one — taking money from the Iraq War — gets majority support.

President Bush's overall job approval rating has reached the lowest ever measured in this poll, and evaluations of his handling of Iraq, the economy and even his signature issue, terrorism, are also at all-time lows. More Americans than at any time since he took office think he does not share their priorities.

The public's concerns affect their view of the state of the country. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say things in the United States are pretty seriously off on the wrong track — the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983. Today, just 26 percent say things are going in the right direction.

DIRECTION OF THE COUNTRY

Right direction
Now     26 %
Wrong track
Now     69 %

Majorities of the public have consistently said the U.S. is off on the wrong track since January 2004. In May 2004, shortly after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal came to light, 65 percent were negative. In November 1994, just as Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades, 6 percent of Americans said the country was off on the wrong track.

PRESIDENT BUSH

President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to his lowest rating ever. 37 percent now approve of the job he is doing as president, while 58 percent disapprove. Those in his own party are still overwhelmingly positive about his performance (nearly 80 percent approve), but the president receives little support from either Democrats or Independents. And while views of President Bush have lately not changed much among Republicans or Democrats, his approval rating among Independents has dropped 11 points since just last month, from 40 percent to 29 percent now.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S JOB APPROVAL

Approve
All           37 %
Reps.      79 %
Dems.     14 %
Inds.       29 %

Disapprove
All           58 %
Reps.      13 %
Dems.     84 %
Inds.       64 %

President Bush also receives his lowest ratings ever on his handling of the economy and Iraq, with only a third approving of either. Here as well, there has been a drop in approval among Independents since last month in both of those areas, although his ratings among Independents were low last month as well.

PRES. BUSH JOB APPROVALS

Overall
Now        37 %

Terrorism
Now        46 %

Iraq
Now        32 %

Economy
Now        32 %

Hurricane Katrina
Now        45 %

Recent hurricanes
Now        46 %

And for the first time in this poll, fewer than half the public approves of the way he is handling the campaign against terrorism. 46 percent now approve, but 46 percent disapprove.

Approval of Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina is about the same as last month, and now stands at 45 percent. Overall evaluation of how he has managed all the recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast is 46 percent.

Since earlier this year, the President has been viewed as out of touch with Americans. Only 32 percent now think he shares their priorities for the country, while twice as many think he does not. At earlier points in his presidency, more Americans felt he shared their goals.

DOES PRES. BUSH SHARE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE COUNTRY?

Yes
Now        32 %

No
Now        65 %

On this question too, the President maintains the support of Republicans (69 percent of them feel he shares their priorities), but finds little among either Democrats or Independents.

President Bush receives less credit for empathy than he has in previous polls. 52 percent of Americans think he cares about people like them at least somewhat, the lowest figure ever.

There are continued questions about his leadership abilities: 52 percent now say they have a lot or some confidence in the President's ability to handle a crisis, and 45 percent see him as a strong leader, down significantly from views at previous points in his presidency, and the lowest number ever in this poll.

DOES PRESIDENT BUSH HAVE STRONG QUALITIES OF LEADERSHIP?

Yes
Now        45 %

No
Now        52 %

*among registered voters

A sizable number of Americans express skepticism about whether President Bush has chosen qualified people for positions in his administration. 52 percent have at least some confidence in his choices, but almost as many, 47 percent, have little or no confidence.

CONFIDENCE IN BUSH'S ADMINISTRATION APPOINTEES?

A lot
All           22 %
Reps.      50 %
Dems.     6 %
Inds.       17 %

Some
All           30 %
Reps.      37 %
Dems.     27%
Inds.       28 %

A little/none
All           47 %
Reps.      13%
Dems.     66 %
Inds.       53 %

Half of Republicans express a lot of confidence in President Bush's choices, while most Democrats and Independents have little or no confidence.

THE ECONOMY AND PERSONAL FINANCES

The public continues to hold negative views of the nation's economy; and the percentage saying the condition of the economy is good is the lowest since September 2003, more than two years ago. Now, 43 percent say the economy is in good shape, and 55 percent say it is fairly or very bad.

VIEWS OF THE ECONOMY

Good
Now        43 %

Bad
Now        55 %

In addition, the outlook for the economy is even more pessimistic than it was last month. More than half — 54 percent — think the economy is getting worse — the highest figure since September 2001, just after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Only one in ten says the economy is getting better.

ECONOMY IS GETTING:

Better
Now        10 %

Worse
Now        54 %

Same
Now        34 %

Even Americans' evaluations of their own financial situation are not very positive. Few say they are better off than they were a year ago. One in three says their family's financial situation is worse today, and half say it is about the same. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say their financial situation is worse today than it was a year ago.

Looking ahead, the public is a little more hopeful as to what the future holds. 30 percent think their family's financial situation will be better a year from now, and 42 percent think it will not change much. 23 percent think their financial situation may be worse a year from now.

FAMILY'S FINANCIAL SITUATION

Compared to a year ago

Better     18 %
Worse    32 %
Same       50 %

The economy remains one of the most important issues Americans want the government to address, outranked only by the war with Iraq. These two issues are followed by gas and oil prices, specific critical mentions of George W. Bush, and terrorism.

U.S. MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM

War in Iraq
Now        18 %

Economy and jobs
Now        16 %

Gas/oil crisis
Now        5 %

President Bush
Now        5 %

Terrorism
Now        4 %

GAS AND OIL PRICES

Recently, President Bush asked Americans to conserve gasoline by driving less and car-pooling. Despite his announcement, the public is skeptical. 50 percent say President Bush thinks the government's priority is not encouraging conservation but increasing the production of petroleum, coal and natural gas. 36 percent think his view of the government's priority is encouraging conservation.

GOVERNMENT PRIORITIES FOR ENERGY

Increase production
Bush's view           50 %
Your view              37 %

Encourage conservation
Bush's view           36 %
Your view              49 %

Americans' own views on this issue are slightly different. 49 percent think the priority for the government should be to encourage people to conserve energy, while 37 percent think the priority should be to increase the production of petroleum, coal and natural gas.

In fact, 64 percent of Americans say they have cut down on the amount of driving they do because of the price of gasoline.

Most Americans don't see any relief in sight when it comes to high gas prices. 61 percent expect the price of gas will go up over the next few months.

IN NEXT FEW MONTHS, EXPECT PRICE OF GAS TO:

Go up                     61 %
Stay the same       21 %
Go down                15 %

American oil companies get the most blame for rising gas and oil prices, with 44 percent placing a lot of blame on them. Another 35 percent say oil companies share some of the blame.

But many also blame the Iraq war and the hurricanes that recently hit the Gulf Coast region. A quarter places a lot of blame on the war in Iraq, and an additional four in 10 blame the war some. 27 percent place a lot of blame on the recent hurricanes, and another 50% say the hurricanes share some of the blame.

BLAME FOR RISING GAS AND OIL PRICES?

American oil companies
A lot                       44 %
Some                      35 %
Not much/none    19 %

War in Iraq
A lot                      24 %
Some                      41 %
Not much/none    33 %

Hurricanes
A lot                      27 %
Some                      50 %
Not much/none    20 %

HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

In addition to perceptions of a worsening economy and higher gas prices, Americans now face the costs of paying for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. When given several possibilities for that, a majority accepts only one option — reducing spending on the war in Iraq. Other proposals, some even now being seriously discussed in Congress, get much less support.

62 percent of Americans say that reducing spending on the war in Iraq would be an acceptable way of paying for recovery and rebuilding on the Gulf Coast. Fewer than half would accept cutbacks in the highway program, and only a third would be willing to increase the federal budget deficit or raise taxes. Even fewer would favor postponing the new Medicare prescription benefits.

ACCEPTABLE WAYS OF PAYING FOR HURRICANE REBUILDING

Cut spending in Iraq                            62 %
Reduce highway spending                 46 %
Increase budget deficit                        35 %
Raise taxes                                             31 %
Postpone Medicare drug benefits     28 %

Three in four Democrats and 68 percent of Independents want to cut spending in Iraq, but only a third of Republicans do.

Last month, in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina,CBS News and The New York Times asked Americans a different question — whether or not they would personally be willing to pay more in taxes for hurricane relief. A majority then said they would.

The Gulf Coast hurricanes continue to take a toll on confidence in the government's ability to protect Americans from terrorism, although there has been some improvement since September. In August, 72 percent of Americans had confidence in the government's ability to protect the country from terrorism. That dropped to 59 percent in September, and stands at 63 percent today. 37 percent still have little or no confidence.

CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT'S ABILITY TO PROTECT FROM TERRORISM

Great deal
Now        16 %

Fair amount
Now        47 %

Not very much
Now        30 %

None
Now        7 %

Similar percentages express confidence (or lack of it) in the government's ability to deal with natural disasters.

Although it now seems that dealing with the recovery from Katrina and Rita may involve large government programs, there is little public enthusiasm for increased government activity. Just 38 percent now say that government should do more to solve national problems, little different from what has been the case for years.

Hurricane Katrina affected more Americans than just those in the hurricane zones. 27 percent say they personally have a close friend or relative affected by the storm. That figure is even higher in the South, where more than a third knows someone affected.

One thing that has changed is that Americans are more optimistic about the rebuilding of New Orleans than they were last month. One in four now expects that the city will be back as a working city in the next year or two, up from 17 percent last month.

IRAQ

More than half of Americans — 55 percent — think the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq (the highest figure to date), while 41 percent think taking military action there was the right thing to do, and a growing number of Americans want U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. Now, 59 percent want U.S. troops to leave, up from 52 percent last month and 40 percent earlier this year. Only 36 percent think troops should stay as long in Iraq as long it takes for that country to become stable.

U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ SHOULD…

Stay as long as it takes
Now        36 %

Leave as soon as possible
Now        59 %

CONGRESS AND TOM DELAY

31 percent of Americans now approve of the job Congress is doing, and 57 percent disapprove. Approval of Congress has never been high, but since March it has been especially low, at about a third. And while most Americans view neither the Democrats nor the Republicans positively, Democrats fare slightly better.

Republicans receive more criticism than Democrats when it comes to their ethics. Although a majority of Americans think members of both parties share the honesty and integrity of most people, 37 percent think the Republicans in Congress are less likely to have those qualities, compared to 28 percent who say that about the Democrats. Fewer than one in 10 Americans think members of Congress — of either party — have more honesty than Americans in general.

HONESTY AND INTEGRITY COMPARED TO MOST AMERICANS

Democrats
More      9 %
Less        28 %
Same       58 %

Republicans
More       5 %
Less        37 %
Same       53 %

Republicans may have been hurt by the recent indictments of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Still, most Americans don't have an opinion of DeLay. 7 percent are favorable, and 21 percent are unfavorable, about the same as opinions in May.

VIEWS OF TOM DELAY

Favorable
Now       7 %

Not favorable
Now        21 %

Undecided/Haven't heard enough
Now        71 %

As for other Congressmen and women, 43 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Democrats in Congress, and 46% have an unfavorable opinion of them. Views of the Republicans in Congress are a bit more negative; 37 percent have a favorable opinion, while more than half, 53 percent, have an unfavorable view.

VIEWS OF THE PARTIES IN CONGRESS

Favorable
Democrats             43 %
Republicans          37 %

Not favorable
Democrats             46 %
Republicans          53 %

Party loyalty plays a role: Democrats tend to see Democrats in Congress favorably, while Republicans see members from their party that way. Independents see both parties in a negative light, but more hold unfavorable views of Republicans than Democrats.

This poll was conducted among a nationwide random sample of 808 adults, interviewed by telephone October 3-5, 2005. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus four percentage points.

Bush's Veil Over History

October 10, 2005
by Kitty Kelley
The New York Times

Washington- Secrecy has been perhaps the most consistent trait of the George W. Bush presidency. Whether it involves refusing to provide the names of oil executives who advised Vice President Dick Cheney on energy policy, prohibiting photographs of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, or forbidding the release of files pertaining to Chief Justice John Roberts's tenure in the Justice Department, President Bush seems determined to control what the public is permitted to know. And he has been spectacularly effective, making Richard Nixon look almost transparent.

But perhaps the most egregious example occurred on Nov. 1, 2001, when President Bush signed Executive Order 13233, under which a former president's private papers can be released only with the approval of both that former president (or his heirs) and the current one.

Before that executive order, the National Archives had controlled the release of documents under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which stipulated that all papers, except those pertaining to national security, had to be made available 12 years after a president left office.

Now, however, Mr. Bush can prevent the public from knowing not only what he did in office, but what Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did in the name of democracy. (Although Mr. Reagan's term ended more than 12 years before the executive order, the Bush administration had filed paperwork in early 2001 to stop the clock, and thus his papers fall under it.)

Bill Clinton publicly objected to the executive order, saying he wanted all his papers open. Yet the Bush administration has nonetheless denied access to documents surrounding the 177 pardons President Clinton granted in the last days of his presidency. Coming without explanation, this action raised questions and fueled conspiracy theories: Is there something to hide? Is there more to know about the controversial pardon of the fugitive financier Marc Rich? Is there a quid pro quo between Bill Clinton and the Bushes? Is the current president laying a secrecy precedent for pardons he intends to grant?

The administration's effort to grandfather the Reagan papers under the act also raised a red flag. President Bush's signature stopped the National Archives from a planned release of documents from the Reagan era, some of which might have shed light on the Iran-contra scandal and illuminated the role played by the vice president at the time, George H. W. Bush.

What can be done to bring this information to light? Because executive orders are not acts of Congress, they can be overturned by future commanders in chief. But this is a lot to ask of presidents given the free pass handed them by Mr. Bush. (And it could put a President Hillary Clinton in a bind when it came to her own husband's papers.)

Other efforts to rectify the situation are equally problematic. Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, has repeatedly introduced legislation to overturn Mr. Bush's executive order, but the chances of a Republican Congress defying a Republican president are slim.

There is also a lawsuit by the American Historical Association and other academic and archival groups before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. A successful verdict could force the National Archives to ignore the executive order and begin making public records from the Reagan and elder Bush administrations.

Unless one of these efforts succeeds, George W. Bush and his father can see to it that their administrations pass into history without examination. Their rationales for waging wars in the Middle East will go unchallenged. There will be no chance to weigh the arguments that led the administration to condone torture by our armed forces. The problems of federal agencies entrusted with public welfare during times of national disaster - 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina - will be unaddressed. Details on no-bid contracts awarded to politically connected corporations like Halliburton will escape scrutiny, as will the president's role in Environmental Protection Agency's policies on water and air polluters.

This is about much more than the desires of historians and biographers - the best interests of the nation are at stake. As the American Political Science Association, one plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, put it: "The only way we can improve the operation of government, enhance the accountability of decision-makers and ultimately help maintain public trust in government is for people to understand how it worked in the past."

Kitty Kelley is the author of "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty."

The Faith-Based President Defrocked

October 9, 2005
by Frank Rich
New York Times

To understand why the right is rebelling against Harriet Miers, don't waste time boning up on her glory days with the Texas Lottery Commission. The real story in this dust-up is not the Supreme Court candidate, but the man who picked her. The Miers nomination, whatever its fate, will be remembered as the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate American majority.

Though James Dobson, America's foremost analyst of the gay subtext of SpongeBob SquarePants, was easily rolled by Karl Rove and dragged back into the Miers camp, he's an exception. The pervasive mood on the right was articulated by Cathie Adams, president of the Texas branch of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. She told The Washington Post: "President Bush is asking us to have faith in things unseen. We only have that kind of faith in God."

This is a sea change. If anything, Ms. Miers's record of opposition to abortion (a contribution to Texans United for Life, a leadership role at a strenuously anti-abortion church) is less "unseen" than that of John Roberts, whose nomination aroused no protest on the right only three months ago. The difference between then and now is a startling index of the toll taken by a botched war and hurricane response on whatever remains of Mr. Bush's credibility. The continuing inability of the administration to accomplish the mission in Iraq and of its post-Brownie FEMA to do a heck of a job on the Gulf Coast has inflicted collateral damage on its case for Harriet Miers.

"The president's 'argument' for her amounts to: Trust me," George Will wrote in the op-ed column that last week galvanized conservative opposition to the nomination. He then went on to list several reasons why he doesn't trust Mr. Bush. As if to prove the point, the president went out to the Rose Garden and let loose with one whopper after another in his first press conference in four months.

"Of all the people in the United States you had to choose from, is Harriet Miers the most qualified to serve on the Supreme Court?" Mr. Bush was asked. "Yes," he answered. Has he ever discussed abortion with her? "Not to my recollection." How much political capital does he have left? "Plenty." With a straight face he promised that Ms. Miers was "not going to change" and that "20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today." Even were that a praiseworthy attribute, it would still contradict the history of a woman who abandoned her Roman Catholic faith for evangelical Christianity and the Democratic Party for the Republicans.

But Mr. Bush's dissembling wasn't limited to his Supreme Court nominee. Asked how he was going to pay for Katrina recovery, the president twice said he'd proposed $187 billion in budget cuts over 10 years - but failed to factor in his tax proposals and other budget increases. The real net total for proposed Bush cuts is $103 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and even less according to some independent number crunchers. Turning to Iraq, Mr. Bush once again fudged our "progress" there with a numerical bait-and-switch, bragging about "30 Iraqi battalions in the lead." (Translation: in the lead with American military support.) Less than a week earlier his own commanders had told Congress that the number of Iraqi battalions capable of fighting unaided had dropped from 3 to 1 since June. (Translation: 750 soldiers are now ready to stand up on their own should America's 140,000 troops stand down.) For good measure, Mr. Bush then flouted credibility one more time to set the stage for the next administration fiasco. In the event of a bird flu epidemic, he said, one option for effecting a quarantine would be to use the military. What military? Last week The Army Times reported that the Pentagon, its resources already overstretched by Iraq, would try to bolster sagging recruitment by tapping "a demographic long deemed off limits: high school dropouts who don't have a General Educational Development credential

Like most Bush fictions, the latest are driven less by ideology than by a desire to hide incompetence. But there's a self-destructive impulse at work as well. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president told Brit Hume of Fox News two years ago. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Thus does the White House compound the sin of substituting propaganda for effective action by falling for the same spin it showers on the public.

Beware of leaders who drink their own Kool-Aid. The most distressing aspect of Mr. Bush's press conference last week was less his lies and half-truths than the abundant evidence that he is as out of touch as Custer was on the way to Little Bighorn. The president seemed genuinely shocked that anyone could doubt his claim that his friend is the best-qualified candidate for the highest court. Mr. Bush also seemed unaware that it was Republicans who were leading the attack on Ms. Miers. "The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," he said, confusing his antagonists this time much as he has Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Such naked presidential isolation from reality was a replay of his response to Hurricane Katrina. When your main "objective sources" for news are members of your own staff, you can actually believe that the most pressing tragedy of the storm is the rebuilding of Trent Lott's second home. You can even believe that Brownie will fix it. The truth only began to penetrate four days after the storm's arrival - and only then, according to Newsweek, because an adviser, Dan Bartlett, asked the president to turn away from his usual "objective sources" and instead watch a DVD compilation of actual evening news reports.

Mr. Bartlett's one desperate effort to prick his boss's bubble notwithstanding, the White House as a whole is so addicted to its own mythmaking prowess that it can't kick the habit. Seventy-two hours before Ms. Miers was nominated, federal auditors from the Government Accountability Office declared that the administration had violated the law against "covert propaganda" when it repeatedly hired fake reporters (and one supposedly real pundit, Armstrong Williams) to plug its policies in faux news reports and editorial commentary produced at taxpayers' expense. But a bigger scandal is the legal propaganda that the White House produces daily even now - or especially now.

As always, much of it pertains to the war in Iraq. On Sept. 28, to take one recent instance, the president announced the smiting of a man he identified as "the second most wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq" and the "top operational commander of Al Qaeda in Baghdad." As New York's Daily News would quickly report, the man in question "may not even be one of the top 10 or 15 leaders." The blogger Blogenlust chimed in, documenting 33 "top lieutenants" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who have been captured, killed or identified in the past two and a half years, with no deterrent effect on terrorist violence in Iraq, Madrid or London. No wonder the nation shrugged at the largely recycled and unsubstantiated list of 10 foiled Qaeda plots that Mr. Bush unveiled in Thursday's latest stay-the-course Iraq oration.

The administration's strategy for covering up embarrassing realities with fiction reached its purest expression two weeks ago when both Laura Bush and Karen Hughes were recruited to star in propagandistic television "reality" shows. In the first lady's case, this was literally so: she was dispatched to Biloxi to appear in an episode of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." The thinking seems to be that if Mrs. Bush helps one family on a hit reality series, perhaps no one will notice the reality that no-bid contracts and ineptitude have kept hundreds of thousands of other hurricane victims homeless indefinitely while taxpayers foot the bill for unused trailers and cruise ships.

Ms. Hughes took her act on the road in the Middle East. There she conducted a culturally tone-deaf "listening tour" in which she read her lines from briefing papers and tried to win hearts and minds by posing with little Arab kids as if they were interchangeable with the little black kids in Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" photo ops back home. She didn't seem to know that this stunt wouldn't even fly on Fox News anymore, let alone Al Jazeera.

This Saturday is supposed to bring new victories on both these troubled fronts: Oct. 15 is the day that Iraqis vote on their constitution and the day that the president set as a deadline for all hurricane victims to be moved out of shelters. Chances are that the number of Americans who still have faith that the light is at the end of either of these tunnels is identical to the number who believe Harriet Miers is the second coming of Antonin Scalia and that Tom Cruise has found true love.

Letter shows Cheney aide was prodded in leak probe

October 8, 2005
by Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney got a push from a prosecutor before telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he wanted her to testify in a probe into the outing of a CIA operative whose diplomat husband was an Iraq-war critic.

The prosecutor's encouragement, in a letter obtained by Reuters, has prompted some lawyers in the case to question whether Cheney's aide was acting completely voluntarily when he gave Miller the confidentiality waiver she had insisted on.

The investigation has spotlighted free-press issues and the Bush administration's aggressive efforts to defend its Iraq policy against critics.

Miller maintains she only agreed to testify -- after spending 85 days in jail -- because she received what she describes as a personal and voluntary waiver of confidentiality from her source. She dismissed an earlier waiver by Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, as coerced.

But Libby offered a new waiver that Miller accepted after he received a September 12 letter in which the prosecutor, investigating a possible White House role in the leak, repeatedly encouraged him to do just that.

"I would welcome such a communication reaffirming Mr. Libby's waiver," prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate.

"It would be viewed as cooperation with the investigation," Fitzgerald said.

Some lawyers in the case called the letter a thinly veiled threat seeking Libby's cooperation, and said it raised questions about whether Libby's waiver was as voluntary as Miller and her lawyers had described.

Others said it was not coercive.

"Is that pressure? Absolutely," said Richard Sauber, a Washington lawyer who represents Time magazine's Matt Cooper, who has also testified to the grand jury. But he added, "It is not unfair and it is not unduly coercive."

Fitzgerald has been investigating Libby, President George W. Bush's top political adviser Karl Rove and other administration officials over the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, and lawyers involved in the case said there were signs Fitzgerald might be preparing to bring charges.

Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, has accused the administration of leaking her name and damaging her ability to work undercover in retaliation for his criticisms of Bush's Iraq policy.

Wilson had investigated for the CIA an administration charge that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Niger and concluded it was unsubstantiated, then he publicly accused the administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq.

Fitzgerald said in the September 12 letter that he was not seeking to compel a more-explicit confidentiality waiver.

"Mr. Libby, of course, retains the right not to so reaffirm his waiver ... if he would prefer that the status quo continue and Ms. Miller remain in jail rather than testify about their conversations," Fitzgerald wrote.

A lawyer in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said, "It's coercive to have the prosecutor, at end of his investigation, say: 'Unless you take this additional step, I'm going to draw a negative inference against you.'"

Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, said Fitzgerald's letter sounded reasonable on the surface, but the reference to cooperation could be taken either way.

"If you think you might be a target of an investigation, being cooperative could be viewed as a desirable thing to be," Kirtley said.

Marvin Kalb of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government said, "Libby took the hint."

Three days after Fitzgerald's letter, Libby on September 15 wrote directly to Miller urging her to testify.

The New York Times has released copies of Libby's letter, but not Fitzgerald's.

On Sept 30, Miller testified before the grand jury about two conversations with Libby in July 2003.

Fitzgerald has summoned Miller again for a meeting on Tuesday after she found notes from an earlier, previously undisclosed conversation with Libby. The Times reported the conversation was on June 25, 2003.

Those notes could help Fitzgerald establish that Libby and other White House officials took an early interest in the backgrounds of Wilson and Plame, and talked to reporters, as reports of Wilson's investigation were surfacing but before he went public in a July 6, 2003, opinion piece in the Times.