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Thursday, April 06, 2006

"Leaking classified information is bad -- unless we do it"
Posted by Jill | 8:43 PM
Well, here's a new spin in the unitary executive theory. Apparently being George W. Bush means never having to say you're sorry you leaked classified intelligence information:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for justifying the invasion of Iraq.

Libby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate," the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the "certain information."


Now this is a president who claims he needs to be able to spy on anyone, to any extent, at any time, in any way, on any aspect of our lives, in the name of national security. And we're supposed to believe that he will use this power responsibly, when he is perfectly willing to leak classified information to the press solely for political purposes?
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