White House Statements

Howard Kurtz: Leaker-in-Chief?

So I thought George W. Bush was against leaks.And that he was especially against leaks of classified information.

“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” the president said a couple of years ago.Bush took that stance again and again in the Valerie Plame case, and said he would fire anyone who was found to have committed a crime by leaking classified stuff.

On that score, Bush is probably safe from having to fire himself, despite Scooter Libby’s accusation yesterday that the president, through Dick Cheney, had authorized him to feed classified CIA data to Judy Miller. The reason: It’s legal for the president to declassify something that otherwise would remain super-secret.

Politically, it’s a mess.

*sigh* This is getting a tad Nixonian for me. What’s next? “That statement is inoperative?”

Comments

  1. John the Marine wrote:

    Doesn’t look good… No, sir I don’t like it! Could it be that some one has gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar?

    Posted 08 Apr 2006 at 6:35 pm

  2. Hugh wrote:

    Ah…but everyone jumps to the conclusion that presidential authorization to reveal information contained in a (subsequently declassified) national intelligence estimate means that presidential authorization was also given to reveal the identity of Ms. Plame as a CIA operative.

    Releasing accurate information in order to counter lies is not “criminal” behavior; it is responsible.

    But, the media is going to call this a “leak” in order to tar the president…just like they called the monitoring of Al Qaeda phone calls to the US as “domestic spying.”

    Posted 08 Apr 2006 at 11:44 pm

  3. Chief RZ wrote:

    Hugh,
    Correct, and someone has implied that The CINC was talking about a certain leak which I define as unauthorized declassifying of classified or worse, giving up classified to someone without a need to know or with the proper level of authorization.
    I’m going to take a brief look at your site.

    Posted 10 Apr 2006 at 3:53 pm

  4. George wrote:

    Leaks are the unauthorized dissemination of classified data or information. If the information has been released with the approval of competent authority, it’s not a leak. When one is President, one may authoriize dissemination of any information one wishes, - no one is more competent than the prez. Presidents are the ultimate declassification authority.

    I recall LBJ back in the 60’s holding an informal press conference on the driveway of the White House reading to reporters directly from a highly classified, compartmented document, the classification markings of which showed up extremely well on television.

    I believe that every recent president has released classified data to support his policies. Hell, I believe that some presidential diseminations of classified materials have been traded to potential enemies of the nation for campaign contributions.

    WRT Pres. Bush’s release of the NIE, I expect that none of the data released came from the compartmented adjuncts to the document. He’s not a democrat, after all.

    Posted 11 Apr 2006 at 4:40 am

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