Well, Judy Miller spent 3 months in the hoosegow in order to prevent anyone from knowing where the information came from. It seems like the president’s declassification was itself classified. What national security interest was served by keeping that information secret. Couldn’t Mr. Bush have called a press conference and, you know, cleared matters up, and had the gal set free? Why’d he let her rot in a cell? Why’d he let Libby et al get tangled up in this obstruction of justice business? The president’s failure to come forward early, and explain what he’d done caused protracted troubles, and a lot of work for a lot of people.
Translation: It’s not dead. It’s pinin’ for the fjords.
What motive do you assume? Is this more of Bush’s evilness? And besides, wasn’t Judith Miller jailed because a “federal judge found New York Times reporter Judith Miller in contempt of court … [ordering] her jailed for as long as 18 months for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative’s identity to the news media”? Why would the revelation of the declassification this thread is concerned with have miraculously sprung Ms. Miller? Or are you still on the “Bush authorized the revelation of Plame’s CIA status” line of thought?
Why does this particular declassification have something to do with Libby’s obstruction of justice charge? Seriously, I think this is begging the question again.
If it’s so easy to demonstrate why John’s question is a non-starter, why not give it a go?
[Expression of Doe eyed innocence]
I was playing with gasoline, and then the house burned down.
[/Expression of Doe eyed innocence]
What a coincidence, huh?
This is a riot! In response to a request to make your case instead of begging the question, you beg the question. You continue to assert as fact that which you have yet to make an argument for. IOW, saying some form of, “he obviously did something wrong,” is not the same as explaining what he did that was wrong.
Heh-hem.
Yep, that’s exactly it. Let me clear on this: I am NOT saying that Bush is innocent or that these documents are NOT full of damning evidence. I’m just asking folks who claim that they are to point to the specific document and show us precisely what is so compelling about them. It’s an honest question, to which I have yet to recieve an honest answer.
Choie: But that quote does not support a claim that Libby released the info about Plame, only that he discussed it. Libby is claiming that the info was already released, and he was simply discussing something that was common knowledge. No? Libby may very well be the guy who did release it, but he isn’t saying so, and Judith Miller isn’t saying so, either. Judith Miller is an enigma in this whole mess. I mean, she never ever wrote an article about Wilson or Plame, and yet she’s at the center. Frankly, her trip to the pokey seemed more like grandstanding to me, and it smelled of “Book Contract” from the get go.
Bricker:
Just to be clear: what is your support for the assertion that the President can change an Executive Order without writing a new one? And does this mean, in your view, that the President (whether Clinton or Bush or Obama or whoever) is never bound by past Executive Orders? That the act of violating an Executive Order amounts to an ad hoc and sub silentio amendment of that Order, at least for the period of time that it’s being violated?
[Disclaimer: I’m one of the law clerks on the Libby case, so I don’t feel it’s appropriate for me to comment on, or debate, anything related to that. But this assertion, in my view, has nothing to do with Libby, and I’m interested to know its provenance.]
It is wrong to engage in ad hoc declassification of state secrets. To see why it is wrong, you merely have to examine what happened when the president engaged in the practice; people going to jail, courts tied up, foreign assets exposed… Claiming a disconnect between the president’s secret declassification, the outing of Plame, and all the subsequent turmoil doesn’t even rise to the level of sophistry, it’s just lamebrained.
This is simply false. Information is declassified all the time. Is it always wrong?
You’re continuing the same game, only now in addition to begging the question, you’re introducing the post hoc logical fallacy. Why were these activities the consequence of this particular declassification? Don Knotts’ death also occurred after this specific declassification. Is Bush to blame for that as well? That bastard.
Then it should be OH SO EASY for you to show why, rather than to simply assert it in an unsupported fashion yet again.
Um…this isn’t hard. (Assuming for our purposes the truth of this stuff, since my own opinion is immaterial and, as I said, inappropriate.)
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Bush says to Cheney, “We need to discredit Wilson because he’s making us look bad. Go ahead and start feeding the press stuff, even now-classified stuff, that supports us and/or tears him down.”
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Cheney tells this to Libby.
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Libby, whether under a specific direction or of his own accord, thinks, “hey, if we reveal that Wilson’s assignment to Niger was the product of nepotism, that will cause him to lose credibility.”
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Libby, whether under a specific direction or of his own accord, then includes the fact that Wilson’s wife was responsible for him going to Niger as part of the parcel of information he feeds the press to support the administration and tear Wilson down.
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Novak publishes his column, and turmoil ensues.
Again – I’m not saying that this happened, but I’m not sure why some people are having trouble accepting it as a plausible inferential chain.
Also, just in case it gets overlooked in the page flip: Bricker, I posed a question to you in post #249.
I should note before making my point that I’m not arguing with you; rather, this is more along the lines of explaining. Not that you haven’t heard this all before, but to some extent this is just an opportunity for me to vent a little.
With that said, I’d answer the above question with a resounding “no”. And here’s why – the “policy / position” you’re referring to is very specific: the declassification of certain information at a certain point in time that was (possibly) not overly harmful to national security. Bush, et al, it seems, are masters at skating the line of legality. It doesn’t surprise me that there’s no law concerning a formal declassification process – I, for one, would never have thought it would be necessary. As a political non-junkie, my default hope is that politicians are in the Mr. Smith mold, honest and upstanding citizens. (Naturally, that’s an overstatement for effect; no one can be that naive.)
Now, here we have a president who campaigned on “restoring integrity to the White House”. Who, as claimed by his supporters, is considered to be honest and straightforward to a fault. And yet, I think many (if not most) people consider omission of facts to be lying. With this administration, we have a definite, coherent pattern of exactly that – need I recount some of the instances? In this case, the strong, unequivocating statements about leaks implied a stance that turns out to be not so honest, much less straightforward. And again, I should point out that this is from the perspective of a person who is not a lawyer, nor a political junkie.
Yes, he evidently followed the letter of the law, in all its technical glory (as Bricker demonstrates effectively over and over again). Sure, perhaps it’s my fault for misreading the implied stance. But the resounding cry goes up – legality is not morality! How people continue to defend specific instances as if they were isolated transgressions, how Bush can continue to maintain this patina of respectability, how people seem to simply accept the veneer for the substance (or lack thereof) is totally beyond me. And I don’t care if this is just the way politics goes; too often I see the justifications “What do you expect from a politician?” or “If you can’t stand the fire, get out of the kitchen.”
Fuck that. I think the American populace wants – nay, deserves – better.
Um, you may want to try a little harder. If you think I’m asking for some plausible (if speculative) chronology that could lead from the president’s declassification to the outing of Plame, you’re missing the point. How is Bush to be blamed? Why does his action naturally lead to an immoral act?
And your premise #1 is biased and flawed. Bush declassified information that was a counterpoint to what Wilson suggested, in the interest of making this clear to the public. Period. Everything else (“Let’s tear him down!”) is Bond villain nonsense, supported only by your own admitted speculation.
Digital Stimulus, I’m missing your point. You realize that lots of presidents have declassified information legally, right? Why was this particular instance immoral, unethical, evil, choose your own adjective? You are yet another voice saying, “Yes, it may be evil, but can’t we all agree that being legal doesn’t excuse this obviously immoral act?” And I ask you–an honest question–what makes it immoral? What?
I cannot claim to have done enough research to make a thorough evaluation, but I think the problem is that Libby gave Martin information about the NIE (and Plame’s job as a CIA agent), which was not, according to the White House, declassified until 10 days later. Now, Libby is saying that Cheney authorized him to give out the information in the NIE to Martin. So, in effect, Cheney declassified the NIE orally, and without notice, (which could be violations of the prior executive orders). Now, the fact that Cheney apparently sent Libby to Martin with the purpose, in part, of discrediting Joe Wilson’s letter to the editor questioning the administration’s prior claims, can be interpreted as Cheney believing he can declassify information for whatever purpose he wishes.
Personally, I think it’s a igross misrepresentation to say that Bush authorized the Plame leak, but it appears that Cheney did authorize the declassification of the NIE information. The fact that the identity of a CIA operative was leaked at the same time that the NIE information was given out gives, at the least, an appearance of impropriety.
This issue is nowhere near misrepresenting intelligence to get us into a preemptive, and unnecessary, war; wiretapping US citizens in violation of the law, or no WMD’s. Luckily, the Bush administration sets the bar pretty high for scandals.
I explicitly wasn’t speculating. I was attempting to characterize the public debate as I understood it. But I will happily concede 100 percent of the points that you make and bow out of this portion of the thread (my question to Bricker is separate) rather than trying to walk an ill-defined line.
On Bush’s orders he can! Are you suggesting otherwise?
What leads you to conclude the identitiy was leaked at the same time. Seriously, cite?
Perhaps. In this instance, though, it seems to be a pretty low bar. One need only call it a scandal, and it is.
I actually had a question for Bricker, too. If the President informally declassifed Plame’s name, there is a specific law against revealing CIA operative’s names. What are the possible interactions with this law?
If Bush told Cheney to leak, and Cheney told Libby to leak the name?
If Bush told Cheney to leak, Cheney told Libby to leak, and Libby leaked the name?
(the above being the point at which the name was leaked. We can reasonably assume that, if the testimony is true, the information leaked was legit to some variant. The question is when the name was leaked.)