McClellan says Bush can leak; NY Post op-ed: DUBYA CAN'T LEAK

DUBYA CAN'T LEAK

April 7, 2006 -- AND INFO WAS ALREADY PUBLIC IT'S amazing how the common topics and subjects of discussion three years ago should vanish so quickly from memory.

Yesterday, breathless news reports suggested that President Bush had directed the "leak" of classified information in July 2003. Yet the "leak" in question was from a document called the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE - and by the time this "leak" occurred, the contents of the NIE as they related to Iraq were almost entirely public.

On Oct. 7, 2002, nine months before Bush's supposed "leak," the administration released an unclassified version of the very same NIE at the urging of Senate Democrats. And in early 2003, reporters hostile to the administration (primarily John Judis and Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic) were being told all sorts of things about the still-classified portions of the NIE.

And this "leak" wasn't a leak in any case. A "leak" is the unauthorized release of government information. The leak of classified information is a crime. But according to Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to the vice president who gave the information from the NIE to a reporter, he only released it because he was authorized to do so by the president himself.

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http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/62024.htm

Evaluating Cheney's Claim Of Unilateral Authority to Declassify Information

By Lee Russ, Section OpEd
Posted on Sat Feb 18, 2006 at 07:47:46 AM EST

Snip...

A piece over at The Washington Note got me thinking about that claim, so I took a read through the Executive order which Bushites cite as giving Cheney automatic authority to unilaterally declassify info, Executive Order 13292, from March 25, 2003

Snip...

Only Part 3 deals with declassifying info once it has been categorized as classified. I read it and, as someone with legal training, I have to say it does not appear to give the vice president anything like unilateral declassification authority. Unless I missed something, for the White House to make that claim, it will have to employ the same kind of tortured analysis it uses to claim that the Joint Resolution authorizing military force against Iraq includes the authority to conduct domestic spying.

Snip...

(a) Did the info leaked by Libby "originate" with the President or Vice President? If not--if it originated with a fed agency, for example--then it should only be declassified through the mandatory declassification review process. Since the info we're talking about is from the National Intelligence Estimate, it seems unlikely that this information would "originate" with the Vice President or the President; it originates with the various security agencies.

(b) If the info is exempt from mandatory declassification review because it did originate with the President or Vice President, how can it be declassified given that the exec order does not specify how? On this one, I submit that it makes absolutely no sense for the Vice President to have unilateral power to declassify "de facto" by simply disclosing the info. That would set up a system where the Vice President's decision to declassify is unknown to anyone else, even the President, and certainly unknown to any other federal agencies which might be aware of reasons not to declassify specific info. That is not only nonsensical, but contrary to the obvious concern exhibited in the exec order that declassification of info that be done carefully, with opportunity for people who understand the implications to voice objections and concerns.

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http://watchingthewatchers.org/story/2006/2/18/74746/4869

McClellan: President Can Declassify Information at Any Time

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2006; 3:33 PM

President Bush's chief spokesman said today the president has the right to declassify sensitive information whenever he chooses and that when he does, it is effective immediately.

In an often testy exchange with the White House media, spokesman Scott McClellan refused to explain the administration's role in the 2003 disclosure -- described in a federal prosecutor's legal document -- of highly sensitive intelligence information about Iraq. The spokesman said it has long been the administration's policy not to comment on ongoing legal proceedings.

McClellan's heated exchange with the press came a day after Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a court filing that White House official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby had told a grand jury that President Bush, acting through Vice President Cheney, directed him to leak information from a classified October 2002 intelligence report to the news media. Fitzgerald characterized the disclosure as part of an administration effort to discredit a veteran diplomat whose criticism of Bush undermined the rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

The filing for the first time placed Bush and Vice President Cheney at the heart of what Libby testified was an exceptional and deliberate leak of material designed to buttress the administration's claim that Iraq was trying to obtain nuclear .

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040700190.html

April 7, 2006
CLASSIFIED LEAKS AS POLITICAL WEAPONS....Did George Bush authorize Scooter Libby to disclose classified information to the New York Times in 2003, as Libby alleges? Oddly enough, it turns out the White House isn't denying it:

A senior administration official, speaking on background because White House policy prohibits comment on an active investigation, said Bush sees a distinction between leaks and what he is alleged to have done. The official said Bush authorized the release of the classified information to assure the public of his rationale for war as it was coming under increasing scrutiny.

So Bush did know about the leak, and he did authorize it. What's more, his excuse is a simple one: he wanted to defend himself against attacks on his war policy, so it was OK.

That's exactly what happened, but it's remarkable that he's willing to admit it. Basically, Bush is saying that it's all right for him to selectively leak classified information whenever he feels it would help him politically.

Are conservatives OK with this? Should presidents be allowed to leak classified information whenever they're under pressure and need to strike back at their opponents? Even Richard Nixon didn't believe that (in 1960, anyway).

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_04/008576.php

July 14, 2005
ROVE vs. NIXON....The current spin from desperate Republicans about Plamegate is that when Karl Rove outed Valerie Plame's identity to reporters, he was merely trying to correct the erroneous impression in the press that Dick Cheney had sent Joe Wilson to Niger to check up on the Iraq/yellowcake story. Not so! It was really the peaceniks in the CIA who sent Wilson, and Rove was just conscientiously trying to set the record straight.

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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_07/006722.php

Tim Rutten:
Regarding Media

Spin cycle springs a leak

April 8, 2006

THIS week's revelation that a former White House aide testified under oath that President George W. Bush personally authorized the leak of classified information as part of a campaign to discredit a prominent critic of the Iraq war raises a number of difficult questions for the press.

According to court papers filed late Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald — the special prosecutor investigating the leak of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the press — Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that, in the summer of 2003, his then-boss told him Bush had personally approved the leak of a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate to Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times

Snip...

Right, and how convenient that the realization that there was no security risk in leaking a classified document alleging that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase African uranium just happened to coincide with the need to justify the invasion of Iraq as part of the president's reelection campaign.

It does seem clear, though, that whatever their real intentions, neither Libby nor Cheney nor the president broke the law in this matter. (Libby was indicted for allegedly lying about whether he told Miller that Plame worked for the CIA.) Most legal authorities agree that the president has the power to declassify information virtually at will. Thursday, Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales went further, saying the president has the "inherent authority to decide who should have classified information." That wasn't a surprise, of course. Earlier in the week, Gonzales testified to Congress that the president has "inherent authority" to order warrantless wiretaps of American citizens communicating with each other inside the United States.

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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten8apr08,1,4541881.column?coll=la-news-columns&ctrack=1&cset=true