Today's shocking Bush revelation is, despite going on and on about the dangers of leaking classified information, the President personally authorized the leaking of classified information:
A former White House aide under indictment for obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing from the special prosecutor in the case.
The court papers from the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, do not suggest that Mr. Bush violated any law or rule. However, the new disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.
Well my faith in the Bush administration is just crushed.
Seriously, this is the Bush administration finally getting caught at a game that they have gotten pretty good at. They leak classified information that makes them look good, such as a foiled bombing plot, and attack anyone who reveals embarrassing classified information, such as the warrentless wire-tapping program. Now Bush has been caught at this game, which will make it hard for him to denounce the next embarrassing leak as a threat to national security.
2 comments:
So, what does this mean for Bush, legally? Any chance of an indictment on this? Did he break the law if he authorized the leak, or is this just another shady thing he did that isn't going to carry any consequences?
What I read in the press is that getting Bush legally on this is unlikely. The Emporer declared a few years ago that he had the right to declassify information arbitrarily, and this is really just a form of that.
However, this should be another nail in the Republicans-are-best-for-national-security coffin....dreaming on!
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