During the same appearance on Monday, President Bush struggled to answer a question on new evidence linking him to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame: “You can’t talk about — you’re not supposed to talk about classified information, and so I declassified the document. I thought it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches. And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing, you know, ongoing intelligence matters, and so I did.”

President Bush has been forced to defend his role in the Plame scandal following former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s recent testimony the President authorized him to secretly disclose Iraq intelligence to a reporter in the buildup to the Iraq war. On Sunday, the New York Times reported the intelligence was leaked despite the fact the administration knew its accuracy had been disputed. During his appearance Monday, President didn’t answer whether he had authorized Libby to leak the information to a reporter.