According to the AP:
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.
[...]
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."
The question of whether or not Cheney was authorized to declassify information was handled well in this post by Steve Clemons in February, 2006. The obvious answer is that, even though Bush signed an Executive Order in March, 2003, which greatly expanded the Vice President's role relevant to the handling of classified information, he was not given the power to summarily leak that information.
The NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) referred to was produced in March, 2003 and related to information about the supposed Niger/Iraq yellowcake connections which Valerie Plame's husband, former ambassador to Iraq, Joe Wilson, discounted after his fact-finding trip to Africa - which the Bush administration sent him to investigate.
It has long been believed that Bush and Cheney authorized the leak of Plame's identity as a covert CIA agent as retribution for Joe Wilson's anticipated public disclosure (in July, 2003) that those Niger documents were forged, thus knocking down the administration's claims that Saddam had been seeking nuclear weapons.
(You can revisit the Plame affair timeline here.)
The fact that Bush has now been implicated in the leaking of classified information flies in the face of his previous claims that he did not sanction anyone in his administration involved in such activity and had vowed that anyone doing so would be dealt with.
Bush quotes about leaking information:
"We can't have leaks of classified information. It's not in our nation's interest." - 10/9/01
"[W]e've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them, and I want to know who the leakers are." -George W. Bush, Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003
"Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing." -10/7/03
"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration." - 7/18/05
Update: According to CNN's legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, Cheney is probably covered legally if Bush authorized him to tell Libby to leak the information because the president does have the power to decide when to declassify information. However, the political problems surrounding these revelations remain and the fact that Bush and Cheney were so bent on revenge against Wilson for simply telling the truth about the forged Niger documents speaks to a complete moral breakdown born of desperation to justify the illegal Iraq war in the White House.
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