De la Vega on the President's Final Jeopardy Question

Asking the right question about presidential leaking:

TomDispatch - Tomgram: De la Vega on the President's Final Jeopardy Question:

"What was different in June 2003 when the President evidently did decide to declassify bits of the NIE? The answer is: He was kicking off his reelection campaign. As Helen Thomas wrote on Friday, June 27, 2003, 'President George W. Bush is trying to scoop up an historic $200 million at political fundraising events to kick off his reelection campaign.' He had raised close to $10 million over the previous week and had more events 'slated for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami and Tampa before the end of July.'

A perfect storm looked to be forming: four months of criticism by Joseph Wilson, mounting questions and criticism about pre-war intelligence and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction -- and the kick off to Bush's historic $200 million reelection campaign. That was the state of affairs on July 6, 2003 when Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared. And as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put it in the filing revealed last week, 'The evidence will show that [it] was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq.' "