Cheney leaked Plame's covert identity NIE estimates on purpose.
Last week Scooter Libby said he had orders to leak Valerie Plame's covert identity directly from the Vice President. Today Cheney responded to the accusation by announcing that he has the power to declassify sensitive government information based on an executive order.
This is where we should have been years ago. Initially the White House pretended that the leakers were rogue moles who the President ordered identified and "taken care of". Then they resorted to the silence of "refusing to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation". Now they're finally saying "that thing that we pretended that someone else did and were outraged about? We did that. On purpose."
Now let's have the conversation we should have had back in July 2003. Cheney apparently intentionally declassified Valerie Plame's covert identity and ordered Libby (and Rove?) to anonymously leak it to the New York times. If Cheney followed the appropriate declassification procedure why was the announcement a total surprise to the CIA? I'm not sure whether Executive Order 12356 which mandates "Originating Agency’s Determination Required" (OADR) applies, but I'm pretty sure that in some form "telling the agencies whose agents' lives depend on the secrets you're revealing" is a part of the process.
"Authority to request that classified materials be declassified" is not in any way the same thing as "authority to reveal still classified material to the New York Times". The fact that it was a surprise to Valerie Plame and a surprise to the CIA (who ordered Fitzgerald's investigation) tells me that Cheney didn't follow declassification procedures.
Cheney's intentionally fragged an entire cover organization of clandestine NOC officers working to prevent a real terrorist nation from getting real WMDs so that he could convince the public to support a war based on intentional distortions of intelligence to deprive a fictional terrorist nation of their fictional weapons.
Dishonest and reprehensible. More here.
Update: Oops, I got the Plame leaks confused with the NIE leaks. My above comments about proper declassification procedures still apply: they just don't apply to Plame leaks because the White House is still denying that they declassified Plame's covert identity. (As they denied declassifying NIE until they were caught.)
This is where we should have been years ago. Initially the White House pretended that the leakers were rogue moles who the President ordered identified and "taken care of". Then they resorted to the silence of "refusing to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation". Now they're finally saying "that thing that we pretended that someone else did and were outraged about? We did that. On purpose."
Now let's have the conversation we should have had back in July 2003. Cheney apparently intentionally declassified Valerie Plame's covert identity and ordered Libby (and Rove?) to anonymously leak it to the New York times. If Cheney followed the appropriate declassification procedure why was the announcement a total surprise to the CIA? I'm not sure whether Executive Order 12356 which mandates "Originating Agency’s Determination Required" (OADR) applies, but I'm pretty sure that in some form "telling the agencies whose agents' lives depend on the secrets you're revealing" is a part of the process.
"Authority to request that classified materials be declassified" is not in any way the same thing as "authority to reveal still classified material to the New York Times". The fact that it was a surprise to Valerie Plame and a surprise to the CIA (who ordered Fitzgerald's investigation) tells me that Cheney didn't follow declassification procedures.
Cheney's intentionally fragged an entire cover organization of clandestine NOC officers working to prevent a real terrorist nation from getting real WMDs so that he could convince the public to support a war based on intentional distortions of intelligence to deprive a fictional terrorist nation of their fictional weapons.
Dishonest and reprehensible. More here.
Update: Oops, I got the Plame leaks confused with the NIE leaks. My above comments about proper declassification procedures still apply: they just don't apply to Plame leaks because the White House is still denying that they declassified Plame's covert identity. (As they denied declassifying NIE until they were caught.)