The Blog Arianna Huffington: Poof! Presidential Magic Turns National Secrets Into Judy Miller "Exclusive" The Huffington Post:
"According to Libby's grand jury testimony (as reported by Patrick Fitzgerald), when Dick Cheney suggested that his former chief of staff leak parts of a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate, Scooter initially refused -- reminding his boss of the classified nature of the NIE.
So Cheney whipped out his trump card, telling Libby that President Bush had authorized the leak. But Libby -- according to Libby -- apparently still felt a little funny about revealing national secrets, so he had a quick lawyer-to-lawyer chat with David Addington, then vice presidential counsel, whom Libby 'considered to be an expert in national security law.'
Expert Addington told Libby not to worry, explaining that Bush's 'authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.' Call it Addington's Theory of Presidential Magic: Take a classified document. Wave the president's wand over it. Say the secret word ('WHIG-y, WHIG-y'). And, presto-chango, the super secret info is now a Judy Miller exclusive!"
I never knew that the appropriate way to declassify classified infomation was to give it to one reporter, secretly. Why not just hand out the NIE at the daily press conference?
Oh yeah, I remember now; because Bush did not want the press to see all the heavy caveats about yellow cake and those scary tubes.
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