[originaltext] President Bush qualified his pledge to dismiss any White House

President Bush qualified his pledge to dismiss any White House official found to have leaked the name of a CIA operative, saying Monday that "if someone committed a crime" he would be fired.
   In September 2003, the White House had said anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed. Bush reiterated that promise last June, saying he would fire anyone found to have disclosed the CIA officer’s name.
   Democrats said Bush in his new comments had "lowered the ethics bar" for his administration.
   Bush would not say whether he was displeased that Karl Rove, the deputy chief of staff, told a reporter that the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction issues. A 2003 phone call with Rove was the first time that Matthew Cooper of Time magazine had heard that Wilson’s wife worked at the agency, ac
cording to a first-person account by Cooper in the magazine.
   The president, in an .East Room news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said there was a "serious ongoing investigation."