Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks
Not the Plame leak, mind you, but rather selected bits of intelligence he felt would help win support for his policies with the public.
For one thing this is hardly news. Howard Dean was using the fact that President Bush authorized making parts of national security estimate reports public to say that Bush is "worse than Nixon." Which, of course, is nonsense. What the President was doing in authorizing this publication of classified information was responding to some very serious allegations about the Bush administrations's case for war made by Joe Wilson.
I do not think it is an unreasonable thing for the President to authorize the release of intelligence to respond to critics of his policies.
There is nothing illegal, unethical or even particularly troubling about the idea of our commander-in-chief choosing to share with the public certain bits of gathered intelligence he feels a) support his policy decisions and b) do not jeopardize our national security by being made public.
For better or worse President Bush is our elected leader and the commander of our military and thus our intelligence agencies. If he wants to make certain bits of intelligence public, that is his prerogative as the President. The Constitution does not make Congress commander-in-chief of the military, it makes the President commander-in-chief, and assuming that he can't make decisions like this unilaterally isn't in keeping with the powers afforded to the chief executive by Article II of that document.
What is hilarious is that many in the media will undoubtedly be screeching about the President "overstepping his powers" with this "leak" of information (though how one could call an authorized release of information a "leak" is beyond me), yet many of these same people will be those who championed the unauthorized and illegal leak that exposed the NSA domestic intelligence gathering program to the media.
As though the unauthorized release of classified information by a government bureaucrat were somehow better than the release of classified information authorized by the President.
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the President through the Vice President" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was "unique in his recollection," the court papers further said.
Libby also testified that an administration lawyer told him that Bush, by authorizing the disclosure of classified information, had in effect declassified the information. Legal experts disagree on whether the president has the authority to declassify information on his own.
The White House had no immediate reaction to the court filing.
For one thing this is hardly news. Howard Dean was using the fact that President Bush authorized making parts of national security estimate reports public to say that Bush is "worse than Nixon." Which, of course, is nonsense. What the President was doing in authorizing this publication of classified information was responding to some very serious allegations about the Bush administrations's case for war made by Joe Wilson.
I do not think it is an unreasonable thing for the President to authorize the release of intelligence to respond to critics of his policies.
There is nothing illegal, unethical or even particularly troubling about the idea of our commander-in-chief choosing to share with the public certain bits of gathered intelligence he feels a) support his policy decisions and b) do not jeopardize our national security by being made public.
For better or worse President Bush is our elected leader and the commander of our military and thus our intelligence agencies. If he wants to make certain bits of intelligence public, that is his prerogative as the President. The Constitution does not make Congress commander-in-chief of the military, it makes the President commander-in-chief, and assuming that he can't make decisions like this unilaterally isn't in keeping with the powers afforded to the chief executive by Article II of that document.
What is hilarious is that many in the media will undoubtedly be screeching about the President "overstepping his powers" with this "leak" of information (though how one could call an authorized release of information a "leak" is beyond me), yet many of these same people will be those who championed the unauthorized and illegal leak that exposed the NSA domestic intelligence gathering program to the media.
As though the unauthorized release of classified information by a government bureaucrat were somehow better than the release of classified information authorized by the President.
