# No "Pound Me In The Ass Prison" for Scooter
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [July 2, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281 "2007-07-02T22:13:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 11
### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/201 "2007-07-08T20:00:57Z")
[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
Thank you.
You just happen to think that the perjury was committed in a lost cause since there was no original crime to convict anyone of anyway. Is that about right?
[/QUOTE]
Much as I don’t like to admit it that may be correct. The President apparently has the right to declassify anything, and if he ordered the information released, it was not a crime to release it. So we don’t really know whether or not a crime was committed.
It was certainly a despicable thing to do.
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### Author:  [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2007, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/202 "2007-07-08T20:05:02Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim]
Much as I don’t like to admit it that may be correct. The President apparently has the right to declassify anything, and if he ordered the information released, it was not a crime to release it. So we don’t really know whether or not a crime was committed.
It was certainly a despicable thing to do.
[/QUOTE]
Especially since **had** he done it and announced it when it became public, we’d have been spared the expense of the investigation etc. But I suspect either:
1. He hadn’t declassified it, was rather caught off guard and then couldn’t back down in public about it when briefed later (“uh, George, funny thing about that whole Plame thing, seems that Dick et al were behind it, and um, ya know…”)
or
1. He had declassified it (or didn’t care about it, which is rather what I believe happened), but didn’t want to suffer the fall out for declassifying a covert operative for purely political points. As is often the case, the devil is in the coverup.
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### Author:  [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)
#### Post date: [July 8, 2007, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/203 "2007-07-08T21:08:46Z")
[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
Thank you.
You just happen to think that the perjury was committed in a lost cause since there was no original crime to convict anyone of anyway. Is that about right?
[/QUOTE]
More or less. I think it’s very difficult to convict anyone of this particular crime. It was an objective almost lost from the start, if it was possible at all. I think there are no material issues of facts to resolve, I think the perjury was revealed in a manner that made what really occurred pretty plain, and when all was said and done, nobody was charged with anything directly related to the objective of the original investigation.
That said, as I indicated earlier in this thread, that doesn’t give Libby a pass to lie.
Zakalwe, FWIW, although I don’t believe the posts I originally made that prompted all this were dickish or out of line in any way, the escalation that occurred after them did seem to cross the “being a dick for the hell of it” line, and for that I’m sorry. Call it a character flaw, but where I come from, if someone comes at you hard, you go right back at him. But that’s not a good excuse. I could have made my point without the vitriol (whether or not I received any), and I didn’t. My apologies.
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### Author:  [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/204 "2007-07-09T00:19:17Z")
[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
More or less. I think it’s very difficult to convict anyone of this particular crime. It was an objective almost lost from the start, if it was possible at all. I think there are no material issues of facts to resolve, I think the perjury was revealed in a manner that made what really occurred pretty plain, and when all was said and done, nobody was charged with anything directly related to the objective of the original investigation.
[/quote]
Absolutely granted. In fact, Fitzgerald has said this many times. The difficulty of getting a conviction on outing a covert agent is, sadly, very high.
> [@](#):
>
> But that’s not a good excuse. I could have made my point without the vitriol (whether or not I received any), and I didn’t. My apologies.
Admirably said. You have my apology as well. As I noted in my first post in this thread, it was truly a “straw/camel” thing. Your “transgression” (such as it was in my eyes) was certainly far from the most egregious I’ve ever seen, it was just the right one at the right time. Know what I mean?
**Boyo** , I get that the Pres can disclassify, but post facto? That’s less clear to me.
This was a monumental fuck-up from the word go and it amuses me that _this_ may be the thing that has finally pushed a number of fence sitters to finally recognize that this administration may be the most ethically and morally bereft in history.
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### Author:  [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/205 "2007-07-09T00:42:00Z")
[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
**Boyo** , I get that the Pres can disclassify, but post facto?
[/QUOTE]
The confusion here, I think, is that Bush very specifically came out after the leak and said “we will get to the bottom of this and punish whoever is responsible.” Seems like he could have cut the whole kerfuffle short if he’d said, instead, “Yeah, y’know, actually, it’s not really classified, because I declassified it, so it isn’t really a leak and we’re not going to worry about it.”
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### Author:  [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/206 "2007-07-09T00:45:09Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
The confusion here, I think, is that Bush very specifically came out after the leak and said “we will get to the bottom of this and punish whoever is responsible.” Seems like he could have cut the whole kerfuffle short if he’d said, instead, “Yeah, y’know, actually, it’s not really classified, because I declassified it, so it isn’t really a leak and we’re not going to worry about it.”
[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s not so much confusion to me as a smoking gun that said that he hadn’t declassified. That’s the genesis of my post facto question. To state it very clearly:
Can the President declassify material **after** it’s already been published?
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### Author:  [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/207 "2007-07-09T01:00:26Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
The confusion here, I think, is that Bush very specifically came out after the leak and said “we will get to the bottom of this and punish whoever is responsible.”
[/QUOTE]
[Not precisely.](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030930-9.html) What he said was "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. "
And he certainly \*has \* been taken care of.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/208 "2007-07-09T01:04:09Z")
[QUOTE=Cervaise]
The confusion here, I think, is that Bush very specifically came out after the leak and said “we will get to the bottom of this and punish whoever is responsible.”
[/QUOTE]
That’s not quite what the [president said](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/20030930-9.html):
> [@](#):
>
> Q Do you think that the Justice Department can conduct an impartial investigation, considering the political ramifications of the CIA leak, and why wouldn’t a special counsel be better?
>
> THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Let me just say something about leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There’s leaks at the executive branch; there’s leaks in the legislative branch. There’s just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.
>
> And so I welcome the investigation. I – I’m absolutely confident that the Justice Department will do a very good job. There’s a special division of career Justice Department officials who are tasked with doing this kind of work; they have done this kind of work before in Washington this year. I have told our administration, people in my administration to be fully cooperative.
>
> I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business.
‘Punished’ and ‘taken care of’ obviously mean quite different things in Mr. Bush’s vernacular.
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### Author:  [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/209 "2007-07-09T01:53:27Z")
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
What he said was "And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. "
And he certainly \*has \* been taken care of.
[/QUOTE]
Well, the Medal of Freedom hasn’t come yet.
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### Author:  [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)
#### Post date: [July 9, 2007, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison-for-scooter/410281/210 "2007-07-09T02:46:52Z")
I don’t claim to know whether he declassified it at all, let alone post facto.
But it’s certainly possible he did it before the fact, and simply lied to the press about it because he didn’t want to take the political heat. The president lying to the press is not a crime either.
I think this is fairly unlikely. I think Cheney ordered it, and he’s not big on checking with GW in advance. But it’s all speculation.
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