Libby says Bush authorized leaks

[Stigmata]

Clinton Vetoes Classified-Leaks Bill

AP 4nov00

NEW YORK -- President Clinton on Saturday vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the leaking of government secrets. The legislation, he said, might ``chill legitimate activities that are at the heart of a democracy.''

The proposal had drawn criticism from news organizations which said it would stifle their ability to obtain information vital to the public.

``We must never forget that the free flow of information is essential to a democratic society,'' Clinton said in a statement.

He cited the ``badly flawed provision'' as the reason he vetoed a bill that authorizes spending for the CIA, National Security Agency and other intelligence activities for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The total intelligence budget is classified and is not made public, but is believed to be about $30 billion.

The president urged Congress ``to pursue a more narrowly drawn provision tested in public hearings so that those they represent can also be heard on this important issue.''

GOP Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the administration did not express concerns about the provision in earlier negotiations.

``To veto this critical piece of legislation now is disruptive and may send a dangerous signal to those who would harm U.S. interests,'' Goss said.

The provision would have extended penalties that now exist for leaking classified, national defense information, to the leaking of other classified, but nondefense data that could harm the United States if made public or given to foreign governments.

Clinton said he agreed with congressional sponsors of the legislation that unauthorized disclosures of classified information ``can be extraordinarily harmful to United States national security and that too many such disclosures occur.''

``Those who disclose classified information inappropriately commit a gross breach of the public trust and may recklessly put our national security at risk,'' he said.

Clinton, however, said that in dispute was not the seriousness of the problem but the best way to respond to it.

``As president ... it is my responsibility to protect not only our government's vital information from improper disclosure but also to protect the rights of citizens to receive the information necessary for democracy to work,'' he said.

LOL

[Burgold]

I love revisionism.

Event 1-- Leaking is intolerable. I will not share information with Congress because they leak too much sensitive information. Anyone who is even hinted at leaking within my administration will be fired.

Event 2-- Well, he's just being accused of leaking. It would be wrong to fire him because in this country there is a presumption of innocence.

Event 3-- I knew nothing of the leaks and those who did leak are damaging national security. These are important classified documents.

Event 4-- President Bush authorized me through VP Cheney to leak the sensitive intelligence.

Event 5-- Well, that's another story. If I authorized it it must have been legal and okay. I have the ability to do that.

anyone else see a change in the story?

[Larry]

http://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy...ent.html#part-3

Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority.

(a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:

(1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;

© If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office determines that information is classified in violation of this order, the Director may require the information to be declassified by the agency that originated the classification. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed to the President through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The information shall remain classified pending a prompt decision on the appeal.

(cc) “Original classification authority” means an individual authorized in writing, either by the President, the Vice President in the performance of executive duties, or by agency heads or other officials designated by the President, to classify information in the first instance.

Just out of curiosity, are you quoting this because you think "The President wants you to leak this to the Press" is mentioned somewhere inside there?

Do you think that if you repeat it 20 times than people's eyes will glaze over and they won't notice that it doesn't apply to what was (allegedly, not yet proven) actually done in this case? (I know, it works when Rush does it: Wave it in the air every ten minutes, and hope nobody will notice that it doesn't really apply to the subject.)

Do you have some information, for example, that the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office did decide that the information in question should be declassified, and that subsequent to that, the other proceedures mentioned were followed?

Do you even have some indication that the information was, in fact, declassified?

(As far as I know, neither Bush nor Cheney have confirmed that what Libby has said actually happened. I'm not going to be amazed if the official response is "Authorization? What authorization? I'm certain there's no written record of such an authorization (any more).")

As I said previously: The difference between "declassified" and "leaked" is "accountability".

Edit: I finally managed to follow your link. (Aparantly, the copies of the link don't work, but the original does. Just had to go back to the original post and use that one.)

The target of the link does have a paragraph that might apply here. (Don't know why you didn't quote it.)

( . . . In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure. This provision does not:

(1) amplify or modify the substantive criteria or procedures for classification; or

(2) create any substantive or procedural rights subject to judicial review.

Seems to me, if "the agency head or the senior agency official" has the authority to unilaterally authorise release of classified material, then the President, as the "agency head of the Executive branch" does, too.

[Larry]

I love revisionism.

Event 1-- Leaking is intolerable. I will not share information with Congress because they leak too much sensitive information. Anyone who is even hinted at leaking within my administration will be fired.

Event 2-- Well, he's just being accused of leaking. It would be wrong to fire him because in this country there is a presumption of innocence.

Event 3-- I knew nothing of the leaks and those who did leak are damaging national security. These are important classified documents.

Event 4-- President Bush authorized me through VP Cheney to leak the sensitive intelligence.

Event 5-- Well, that's another story. If I authorized it it must have been legal and okay. I have the ability to do that.

anyone else see a change in the story?

Looks like you missed Event 6-- Blame Clinton.

[Burgold]

I love revisionism.

Event 1-- Leaking is intolerable. I will not share information with Congress because they leak too much sensitive information. Anyone who is even hinted at leaking within my administration will be fired.

Buzz 1-- Bush will get to the bottom of this. He is the defender of security. Those damn dems are always leaking stuff to undermine national security for their own power grab

Event 2-- Well, he's just being accused of leaking. It would be wrong to fire him because in this country there is a presumption of innocence.

Buzz 2-- Bush had nothing to do with this and he's right besides. There is a presumption of innocence and Bush has to uphold the law as President.

Event 3-- I knew nothing of the leaks and those who did leak are damaging national security. These are important classified documents.

Buzz 3-- Even if Rove and Cheney knew something it wasn't illegal because she wasn't in the field at the time. So it wouldn't hurt national security. Besides, Bush wouldn't know about this. His first concern is American security. He doesn't care about polls. He cares about doing what is right.

Event 4-- President Bush authorized me through VP Cheney to leak the sensitive intelligence.

Buzz 4-- Well, it wasn't about Plame.

Event 5-- Well, that's another story. If I authorized it it must have been legal and okay. I have the ability to do that.

Buzz 5-- if bush used his magic wand and tapped a list of documents and proclaimed them unclassified then it immediately became so. Besides, anything that galvanizes the people towards what Bush wants has to be ultimately good for the people.

anyone else see a change in the story?

[Thiebear]

I agree with Event 4: so far.....

All the rest are bunk...

[Burgold]

How so? Didn't Bush claim he didn't want to share info with Congress because there were too many leaks in Congress? Didn't he threaten to fire anyone was sugggested to be involved with the leak and then backtrack when Rove and Cheney were accused saying that they were innocent until tried? Didn't he claim to nothing about who leaked any information? You agree with four. Five came more from this board and I don't where that line of thinking originated.

[Crazyhorse1]

i refer back to page 2.

The President AND Congress SHOULD declassify certain information to share with the American people when they wish to go to WAR? ie, sattelite pictures, deserter testimony, the cousin of the kink of jordan, etc. etc.

Am i correct so far?

AND I also read this tidbit:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6040600333.html

A former top aide to Vice President Cheney told a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity that President Bush authorized him to disclose classified intelligence information about Iraq as a way of rebutting criticism from the agent's husband, according to court papers filed by prosecutors.

However, the former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that although he gave a reporter sensitive information from a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in a July 2003 conversation with the president's approval, he did not disclose the CIA employment of Valerie Plame.

Am I still correct so far or have things changed?

1. IF nothing has changed there is still nothing to see.

2. IF things have changed documents so that Cheney/Bush authorized the Leak of VP then off with them...

until then though, you might want to calm some of the really tin foil hat stuff down a skosh...

We are all aware that V.Plame name was not given in Libby's testimony. What Libby's testimony shows is that Bush was directing releases of classified materials, probably generally, and probably in the case of Libby's leak. Nothing more is claimed, but this is huge. This is a open door for further investigation and concrete criminal charges.

[Kilmer17]

Let me ask a simple question.

How does a "classified document" become "unclassified"?

And second, who get's to make this decision?

[Thiebear]

We are all aware that V.Plame name was not given in Libby's testimony. What Libby's testimony shows is that Bush was directing releases of classified materials, probably generally, and probably in the case of Libby's leak. Nothing more is claimed, but this is huge. This is a open door for further investigation and concrete criminal charges.

If Libby's wife's name is not in there...... You've got nothing.

[Burgold]

Kilmer,

Did he declassify it or allow it to be leaked and is there a difference?

[Kilmer17]

Kilmer,

Did he declassify it or allow it to be leaked and is there a difference?

Im seriously aqsking that question.

I have no idea myself if there is a difference legally.

[Burgold]

Ah sorry. I am assuming that the president can't simply declare something de-classified. There has to be some paperwork, some procedure that follows this decision. In this case, it would be easy to find out if the document in question was ever officially de-classified. If it wasn't, then you get into the credibility war. Do you choose to believe the guy on trial trying to avoid jail or the President if he denies this (which he hasn't yet).

My understanding is that this info was never formally declassified, but was allowed to be partially leaked according to Libby's testimony and therefore Libby knowingly leaked classified materials, but with the President's tacit approval (unless of course, Cheney lied about getting the okay from Bush) I'm getting dizzy. Still to many what ifs. The leaking itself seems to be of materials that may be classified even today.

[Hooper]

What an absolute disaster this administration is. Republican or democrat, we have nowhere to go but up. I just want competence -- heck, someone should just run on that simple platform.

[Midnight Judges]

Let me ask a simple question.

How does a "classified document" become "unclassified"?

And second, who get's to make this decision?

So if a Democrat gets elected President, he can take a poll of CIA agent's political affiliations, and simply oust all the Republicans. You think that would be legal. Ugh.

[brewdogmike]

The Left's Libby Lie

What Actually Happened

Invoking an Executive Order that gives the president and vice president authority to change the status of classified documents, in July 2003 President Bush declassified portions of the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. The document had been compiled the previous fall at the request of Senate Democrats Durbin, Levin, Graham, and Feinstein. It was completed on October 1, 2002.

Portions of the NIE had been disseminated from that moment forward. Reporters asked Ari Fleischer about findings of “the National Intelligence Estimate” in four separate questions during a press briefing just eight days later, on October 9, 2002. Based on its conclusions, most Congressional leftists voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq.

Months after Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, and after Operation Iraqi Freedom had commenced, Joe Wilson wrote his infamous op-ed claiming he found no evidence Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. According to Fitzgerald’s court document, this is when Dick Cheney “expressed concerns to defendant [Libby] regarding whether Mr. Wilson’s trip was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson’s wife,” CIA agent Valerie Plame. These “concerns” probably stemmed from Wilson’s own account of “sipping sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people” – at poolside. They were undoubtedly exacerbated by the fact Cheney knew the CIA concluded Wilson’s trip “lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal”; that is, Wilson’s debriefing led Langley to believe Saddam had approached Niger for yellowcake. Cheney’s concerns proved justified: we now know Plame campaigned for the Agency to send her husband to investigate “this crazy report.” Both Wilsons were partisan, antiwar Democrats who had given thousands of dollars in campaign cash to such leftists as Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Charlie Rangel, and Hillary Clinton. On July 6, 2003, Wilson went public in an attempt to discredit the war, shortly before landing a position with John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

At the same time, leftist senators, many of whom voted to support the war, had turned their back on the troops now in harm’s way. Just after Wilson’s op-ed, Ted Kennedy accused President Bush of “politicizing intelligence and falsifying facts to justify resort to war.” (Soon, he would claim the war was a “fraud” neocons “made up in Texas.”) Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-CA, told a crowd at UC-Berkeley, “This administration took part fact and part supposition…and they shaped it to reach a preconceived conclusion for the use of force, something that they had determined to do sometime well before March of this year.” Even Jay Rockefeller huffed, “Signs of a weapons program are very different than the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that were a certainty before the war.”

Against this onslaught, President Bush declassified the NIE’s “Key Findings.” Bush, through Cheney, gave Scooter Libby the green light to discuss portions of the NIE with reporters and made the “Key Findings” available to the public on July 18, 2003. Although Congress had been privy to its contents, and its outlines had long been circulated in the media, now everyone could see the intelligence community’s assessment, which was more dire than any picture President Bush presented. (It was, after all, drawn up by George Tenet’s CIA; Tenet told Bush the case for Saddam’s WMDs was “a slam dunk”.) Among its conclusions:

• Saddam “could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year”;
  
• “Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles”; and
  
• “Iraq's offensive [biological weapons] programs are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf war.”
  

This was no attempt to “punish” Wilson – who by now fraudulently claimed to have seen forged documents the CIA did not possess while he was working for them. This was an attempt to defend the integrity of the war American fighting men and women were still waging halfway around the world. (If he did feel reprimanded, Wilson eased his pain by signing a book contract and posing for glossy pictures with his “covert” wife.)

In typical fashion, leftists now blame Bush for declassifying a harmless portion of the NIE in order to defend himself from their own scurrilous and disingenuous attacks.

[Larry]

Let me ask a simple question.

How does a "classified document" become "unclassified"?

And second, who get's to make this decision?

From the document that OSF provided a link to, the entire section (he didn't quote all of it.)

Part 3. Declassification and Downgrading

Sec. 3.1. Authority for Declassification.

(a) Information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order.

( It is presumed that information that continues to meet the classification requirements under this order requires continued protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure. This provision does not:

(1) amplify or modify the substantive criteria or procedures for classification; or

(2) create any substantive or procedural rights subject to judicial review.

© If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office determines that information is classified in violation of this order, the Director may require the information to be declassified by the agency that originated the classification. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed to the President through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The information shall remain classified pending a prompt decision on the appeal.

(d) The provisions of this section shall also apply to agencies that, under the terms of this order, do not have original classification authority, but had such authority under predecessor orders.

That's all of Section 3.1

Looks to me like the parts OSF quoted don't say a lot about the current situation, but 3.1.b, which he didn't include in his quote, seems perfectly relevant.

It says, to me, that the head of an agency (and I assume it has to be the same agency that classified the information) can unilateraly decide "as an exercise of discretion" that the public's need to know outweighs an agency's need to secrecy, and declassify a document.

And I'd claim that if, say, the head of the CIA can declassify a document, then so can the President.

As I read that law (proceedure? policy?), yes, the President can wave a magic wand, and it's not classified any more.

(Now, I assume there's more to it than that. Forms to fill out, people need to be notified. Clerks need to redact the classification stamps on their archived copies and replace them with new ones. That sort of thing. But it really indicates to me that yes, he's got the authority.)

[Predicto]

I have a simple question too. Is this stuff actually declassified? I mean, can I go somewhere and read the whole thing, all the documents, right now? I actully do not know the answer.

I am concerned that the argument being put forward here is that the documents were classified, and then unilaterally unclassified by the President they could be leaked, and then quickly classified again so that national security would again be protected? Is that right? Because if that is the gist of the argument, even the Kool-Aid drinkers are going to start having problems with it.

[Larry]

I think you've got a good point.

I think Dan Rather should go down to the courthouse and file an FOIA request for the SNIE and see what he gets.

Although I'd bet that, if it wasn't declassified two weeks ago, it is now.

[Thiebear]

So if a Democrat gets elected President, he can take a poll of CIA agent's political affiliations, and simply oust all the Republicans. You think that would be legal. Ugh.

This is a red herring, even Crazyhorse says outing of the CIA agent isnt in there.... Please try again...

[Midnight Judges]

The Left's Libby Lie

That was some class A history revision. frontpagemag is not a legitimate source of information.

Several problems off the top of my head:

1. Intelligence analysts were pressured to come up with evidence of WMD in Iraq.

2. All evidence to the contrary was ignored and it's proponents were demoted or fired.

3. Bush said it himself: Classified information was leaked and that he would fire whoever did it. He can't have it both ways. Yet another indisputable lie (I'm still awaiting the debunking you embarked on in the Hannity thread. You were doing rather well considering the futility of your stance)

[@DCGoldPants]

It doesn't matter what its about anymore.

Its the cover-up that is going to take the stage.

too many quotes and video of the admin denying all of this, pretending to care about hunting down where this was leaked.

McClellan bombed during the briefing today, and they won't deny anything.

[Midnight Judges]

This is a red herring, even Crazyhorse says outing of the CIA agent isnt in there.... Please try again...

But it would be technically legal in your opinion, right?

[Burgold]

Does it satisfy you that for this to be legal it rests on a technicality? The weight of Bush and the Administration treating this as an illegal act for three years and hiding their participation of it doesn't matter more?

[brewdogmike]

That was some class A history revision. frontpagemag is not a legitimate source of information.

Just because you disagree with the conclusions, that doesn't make it illegitimate.

Several problems off the top of my head:

1. Intelligence analysts were pressured to come up with evidence of WMD in Iraq.

2. All evidence to the contrary was ignored and it's proponents were demoted or fired.

Says who? Wilson? Plame? Someone else with an agenda?

3. Bush said it himself: Classified information was leaked and that he would fire whoever did it. He can't have it both ways. Yet another indisputable lie (I'm still awaiting the debunking you embarked on in the Hannity thread. You were doing rather well considering the futility of your stance)

If President Bush OK'd the release of portions of the key findings of the NIE --then there wasn't a leak of classified information.

And sorry if I pooped out after researching and writing and rebutting only three of that list. Just haven't had the time to get back to it.