It really doesn't matter if Cheney has the authority to declassify

whatever he wants, as he claims.

First, let me say that he DOESN'T have that power, and only an act of pure imagination can read such authority into the governing rule that he cites.

But even if he did have the legal authority to classify or declassify things as he chooses, he is still responsible for the way in which he uses that authority.

For example, if he acted to declassify something and that act foreseeably resulted in serious harm to the nation, then he has committed a high crime within the Constitutional meaning of that term as it is used in the impeachment clause.

Suppose, for example, it was 1947 and the Vice President took it upon himself to declassify the technology of the atomic bomb, with the result that the Russians then learned how to build them. Further, suppose that the Vice President did so because the Soviets bribed him to do it. Do you imagine for an instant that such a Vice President would not be immediately impeached, convicted, removed from office, and brought into criminal court for treason?

about "executive orders" is that there is really no reason to assume that they are constitutional. The legislative and judicial branches have never really addressed that issue, as Gore Vidal reminds us in "Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia." (See pages 130, 146-8, and 156.) No case provides a clearer need for both the congress and the courts to examine "executive orders" than Cheney instructing Libby to release NIEs to journalists for purely political purposes.

only my hypothetical was: Suppose the US was mounting some sort of covert activity against another country, The leader of the action is an individual that has fallen out of favor with The Dick. According to Cheney he could divulge the action to the affected country resulting in failure of the mission and capture or death of the members of the mission and it would be OK because the pResident gave him "the authority".

I am not a lawyer, but the CIA could not run if it did not routinely lie -- by using what they call black lies.

Cheney is a trained professional liar, whom believes that he can lie – because the ordinary people of America can’t handle the truth. In fact that is what the PNAC (a front group for the military-industrial-complex) says.

I am not a lawyer, but I think all he did was use psych warfare to discredit a critic of the war. Cheney thinks the war is necessary for our National Security -- so he thinks he can therefore lie, and use psych warfare tactics.

What Fitz should really be doing is putting the PNAC on trial -- but he won’t because he has no intention on winning.