The Central Intelligence Agency objected to producing presidential briefing documents sought by lawyers for the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday in the C.I.A. leak case.
A C.I.A. official wrote in the affidavit that turning over copies of the highly classified President's Daily Brief would interfere with the agency's responsibilities to provide the president with crucial and timely intelligence.
The briefing., wrote the agency official, Marilyn A. Dorn, is "the most sensitive report" produced by the agency's Directorate of Intelligence, and it is the basis for a continuous dialogue between the president and the country's intelligence agencies.
Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former top Cheney aide charged in the case, requested 300 to 500 documents, related to presidential briefing material from May 2003 to March 2004, as a crucial part of his defense to perjury and obstruction charges.
In response to the agency's objections, Mr. Libby's lawyers said in a court filing on Tuesday that they needed the material to show that the issues Mr. Libby dealt with in the presidential briefs "dwarfed in importance" the matters related to the exposure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson.
Ms. Dorn, an information review officer at the National Clandestine Service, wrote that it would take the C.I.A. about nine months to prepare the documents sought by Mr. Libby's lawyers, in part because Mr. Libby did not always receive the same briefing material prepared for the president and the vice president.
The presidential brief is prepared each day by a small staff at the C.I.A, Ms. Dorn wrote. "Moreover, the job would divert their precious time and effort away from their primary task: preparing breaking intelligence for the president's immediate attention," she added.
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