"I Can Do Anything I Want!" - George W. Bush

Specter Says Bush, Cheney Should Explain Leak

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and those claiming authority from the White House have declared that they can declassify documents and national security information--including the identity of CIA agents and operatives--at their whim...er, discretion.

But stating that as fact doesn't make it so. There is a process that must be followed. The discretion to classify or declassify is not an absolute right or complete authority of the executive branch of our government. We have laws and regulations and procedures that govern how these things must be done. We are a nation of laws, not of the whims of men (or women). We have a provision in our Constitution that addresses the requirement for due process. We have laws that govern the classification and declassification of our secrets. If it is illegal, as the Bush administration claims, for others to leak classified information--even under the auspices of blowing the whistle on waste, criminal activity and unprincipled actions, then how can the Bush administration claim that THEY have special dispensation for bypassing our established rules, regulations and processes?

Something is wrong. Our country was founded on a principle that all of mankind is created equal... that no person is above the law... that the law serves a purpose... and that purpose follows principles in service to the people of the United States of America. How is it that George W. Bush, his gang of governmental thugs, and the GOP leadership all seem to think that the law is in the service of their administration and their party? Calling President Bush to task on this issue is all the more important since his gang has used the assumed authority to declassify at will to expose others to danger and ridicule in a deliberate political attack motivated by vengeance and self-interest.

Senator Specter is right in at least asking for an explanation. But we have to look at the pervasive pattern of manipulation and misdeeds under the Bush banner. It is time for serious efforts to remove this criminal from office.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney need to explain what classified information was authorized to be leaked to reporters in July 2003 and why, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday.

"I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated," Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) said. He was referring to last week's revelation in a court document that Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, testified that Cheney told him Bush approved leaking parts of a classified document about intelligence estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Specter said on "Fox News Sunday" that he had heard yesterday morning about a report, first published by the Associated Press, that a lawyer close to the case said Bush "didn't tell the vice president specifically what to do, but just said get it out."

Bush approved providing information from the then-classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in a memorandum filed in federal court Wednesday. The prosecutor cited Libby's testimony to a grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA operative's name.

There has been no confirmation of Bush's role, nor of what exactly Libby was authorized to disclose from the 90-page NIE. Fitzgerald's memo, which provided new information on several aspects of the CIA leak case, came as a result of a request by Libby's lawyers for a range of classified documents to defend their client against charges of obstruction of justice, perjury and making false statements to the FBI.

Libby, according to the memo, told the grand jury that Cheney "specifically had authorized" him to disclose "certain information" from the classified NIE.

Libby also testified that he was "directed" by the vice president to speak to reporters about the NIE and to provide information from a "cable authored by [retired ambassador Joseph C.] Wilson." The latter apparently referred to a classified March 2002 CIA summary of Wilson's report on his trip to Niger in February 2002 to find out whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium.

Some of Libby's comments about the NIE that he made to reporter Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003, were inaccurate. Libby said one "key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was 'vigorously trying to procure' uranium." That was not an NIE key judgment, and the CIA officials who wrote the document disputed that statement.

Libby also inaccurately described the CIA report on Wilson's trip, saying the former ambassador reported information about an Iraqi delegation visiting Niger in 1999 that was "understood to be a reference to a desire to obtain uranium." In fact, Wilson said he was told that a Niger official was contacted at a meeting outside the country by a businessman who said an Iraqi economic delegation wanted to meet with him. The Niger official guessed that the Iraqis might want to talk about uranium because Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger in the mid-1980s. But when they met, no talk of uranium took place.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said that although Bush has the right to declassify information, it was wrong to do it for political purposes. "This was a declassification in order to mislead America . . . and in order to buttress their phony argument about the war," Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Bush was correct in declassifying the information because the administration believed that Wilson, in his statements in July 2003, had "gone public with half of the story." Kyl, who believes Britain had intelligence about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger that the United States could not confirm, said the administration had mishandled the matter.