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Looks like someone isn't too happy about the prospect of going to jail for doing what he was told.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for going to war.

Libby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate," the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the "certain information."

Looks like this is about more than outing Plame, but I'm sure Bush will claim the authority of the office makes his authorizing leaks of classified national security information legal, even though he has criticized others for allegedly doing the same thing and began an investigation to find out who squealed about his beloved domestic spying program. And I'm sure Alberto Gonzalez will back him up.

But if things break the way polls say they will in the November elections, and the GOP loses its majority in Congress, things could get very interesting.

Stay tuned.