Evening Newscast Wrap

W A S H I N G T O N, June 2, 2004<br> -- A product of Noted Now and The Note

News Wrap Archives

Scott Pelley substitutes for Dan Rather

LEAD: ABC leads with Oil money. ABC's Betsy Stark reports. CBS leads with an exclusive on the investigation of who in the Bush administration may have revealed the identity of a CIA operative. CBS' John Roberts reports. NBC leads with the Chalabi investigation. Andrea Mitchell reports.

ABC's Betsy Stark: Today OPEC's members seemed to agree with the Saudis that they need an increase in oil production to lower prices. This move is unlikely to translate to lower gas prices.

CBS' John Roberts reports that President Bush has spoken to an outside attorney to possibly represent him the investigation into who in the administration leaked the name of a CIA operative to the media last year. White House officials confirmed today that Bush has attorney Jim Sharp on standby. A federal grand jury has been hearing testimony since January in secret, attempting to ascertain the source of the leak that identified Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. Her husband, former Abassador Joe Wilson charges that his wife's cover was blown as payback to his challenge to last year's State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein was actively seeking uranium to build a bomb. Bush SOT: states he has no tolerance for such leaks, but expresses doubts that they will find answers.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell report on Ahmed Chalabi telling Iranian government that Washington had broken its secret intelligence code includes reference to fact that Chalabi was a "Bush family guest" at the State of the Union.

BUSH HIRES LAWYER: Jennings V/O: The White House confirms that President Bush has put a lawyer on standby in the event he has to testify in the investigation of who leaked the name of a CIA operative last year. The lawyer's name is Jim Sharp.

To match CBS, the NBC Nightly News added a Tom Brokaw tell at the top of the third block on Bush putting a personal attorney "on standby in case the president himself is forced to testify" in the Valerie Plame case.

TROOP STRENGTH: Jennings intro: The Army has said that soldiers will have to stay in the military longer than they may have planned, so that the Army has enough troops ready for combat to continue the mission in Iraq. Recruiting is on the decline. ABC's Martha Raddatz reports that Gen. Peter Pace, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Senate panel today that the Air National Guard has the biggest decline at 23 percent. SOT Capt. Andrew Exum notes the difficulty for soldiers to serve longer than anticipated. Bill Nash SOT: "I think we are starting to see signs in the next six months to a year that we will have some major problems if we don't changes the incentives necessary to gain and then retain soldiers."