Bush Aide Escapes Charges Over Cia Agent's Leaked Identity

The White House was spared a criminal prosecution against its master strategist yesterday after Karl Rove was advised he would not face charges in the CIA leak affair.

The decision by the prosecutor investigating the outing of the undercover agent Valerie Plame removes a pall that had hung over Mr Rove at a critical time for George Bush and a Republican party confronting a disaffected electorate ahead of November's mid-term elections.

The White House issued a statement saying it was pleased for Mr Rove, who has been the architect of every election victory for Mr Bush since his days in Texas.

Republicans predicted the decision would invigorate the party, freeing Mr Rove to concentrate on turning round Mr Bush's ratings. "The president is looking a little better, a little stronger," Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the house, told Fox News yesterday.

But Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic national committee, said: "He does not belong in the White House. If the president valued America more than he valued his connection to Karl Rove then Karl Rove would have been fired a long time ago," he told NBC television.

Speculation that Mr Rove could face criminal charges grew in recent months as he was called to testify five times before a grand jury investigating whether administration officials had deliberately exposed the identity of Ms Plame in retaliation for critical remarks by her husband, Joe Wilson, a former ambassador. Ms Plame's identity was leaked in July 2003, days after her husband publicly accused the White House of falsifying intelligence about Saddam Hussein's attempts to buy uranium from Niger.

The charge in the New York Times was seen as a personal attack on the integrity of the administration and the vice-president, Dick Cheney. While Mr Rove is in the clear, the administration is still dogged by the CIA leak case with Scooter Libby, Mr Cheney's former chief of staff, due to go to trial next year.