Lewis Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is for now the public face of the Bush administration in the case of leaking the name of a covert CIA agent because he has been indicted for obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury over what he told reporters. But the meaning of the indictment goes to the most-contentious issue of the Bush White House: a determination to find evidence to justify an attack on Saddam Hussein.

Part of that cost was to dismiss CIA intelligence that cast doubt on the administration’s reasons for going to war. The CIA had suffered blame along with the intelligence community generally for the failure to prevent the 9-11 attacks; some of its tensions with the White House are now well known.

The question of whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or, more specifically, had obtained or tried to obtain uranium from Niger was highly contentious within the administration. When Joseph Wilson, who had visited Niger on behalf of the CIA, began to speak publicly about his findings that no such deal had occurred, Mr. Lewis began a whisper campaign that included announcing that his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, arranged in her role as a classified CIA agent to get Mr. Wilson that trip.

A trial will determine whether Mr. Libby has actually committed the acts charged by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and the administration is still waiting on a possible indictment of the top aide to President Bush, Karl Rove. However, Prosecutor Fitzgerald made clear his indictment is brought based on Mr. Libby’s potential damage to intelligence gathering and compromise to national security and the endangering of CIA employees.

As serious as these charges are, they are not worth bringing Washington to a standstill. The president and vice president can help get it moving again by clarifying where they stand in all of this. The vice president already has announced that because a trial is pending he would have nothing to say about the details of the case. (Mr. Libby is alleged to have learned about Mrs. Wilson from the vice president, among others.)

That silence would be a mistake and would make a White House that appears defensive these days seem even more so. The war has divided this nation, and this leak case is one more example of how it has. By explaining itself, the White House can help ease that division.