Final Jeopardy

Commentary: Asking the Right Question About the President's Involvement in the CIA Leak Affair
By Elizabeth de la Vega
April 10, 2006

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt

Words fail. As last week ended, the Vice President, we learned (in papers filed in federal court by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame-Niger-Uranium, sixteen-fateful-words, disagree-with-us-and-we'll-whack-you case), told his chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby, that the President "specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE" -- in other words that George had authorized Scooter to leak parts of a highly-classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate to New York Times reporter Judith Miller in order to discredit former ambassador Joseph Wilson and, in effect, out his CIA agent wife Valerie Plame. The President is well known for having stated, in relation to this increasingly bizarre and twisted case: "I don't know of anyone in my administration who has leaked. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action" and for having taken the sternest positions on the very subject of leaking. ("Leaks of classified information are bad things.

We've got too much leaking in Washington. I want to know who the leakers are.")
These are, of course, statements open to interpretation. How much, after all, do any of us really know ourselves? How much, many have asked, does this President really know himself. How much harder it will certainly be for him to know himself now that he has become the contortionist-in-chief, the human Pretzeldent. Given where they are, how could one of his hands be responsible for knowing what the other hand actually did. Perhaps the explanation for all this is simple enough: As our commander-in-chief in time of "war" (as defined and declared by him) and our all-powerful "unitary executive" (as defined and declared by a coterie of lawyers around the Vice President's office), he simply claimed the right to declassify not just top-secret documents, but himself whenever he wanted. After all, being President means, as George demonstrated only recently, never having to say you're sorry, even when you flip-flop on a significant issue.

On the other hand, perhaps the Vice-President was lying about the President. Maybe it was Dick who wielded the power of declassification and made that NIE available to his chief of staff -- or rather cherry-picked already discredited parts of an NIE already filled with cherry-picked factoids about oh-so-invadable Iraq. After all, we learned only a month and a half ago that the President had quietly issued Executive Order 13292 back in 2003, for the first time in history granting a Vice President the same right to declassify secret documents as the President. Increasingly, secret is as secret does.

Or maybe Libby is simply ratting on his former boss. Outing the guy who left him out to twist, twist in the wind. Or maybe…

But let me stop there. The Bush administration increasingly has all the charm -- and given its ever-sinking polling figures, all the popularity -- of a late Byzantine court. So let me turn this rest of this Toad's Wild Ride of an inside-the-Beltway Imax 3-D extravaganza over to former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega. Let her direct you to the right questions to ask to unravel our present magical mystery tour of this labyrinth of a case in which, it looks increasingly apparent, Bush and Co. have lost their way.

Internet journalist Jason Leopold, by the way, reports "that soon, new information will emerge from the special counsel's office that will prove President Bush had prior knowledge of the White House campaign to discredit Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Coming next week: The President and Vice President claim the right to impeach Congress.

Final JeopardyAsking the Right Question About the President's Involvement in the CIA Leak AffairBy Elizabeth de la Vega

The latest in a parade of horrors emanating from the Bush administration appeared Thursday in the form of a revelation buried in papers filed in federal court by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in his investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, now under indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, told the Grand Jury Fitzgerald convened that President Bush had -- via Vice President Cheney -- authorized him to disclose selected information from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, which he did during a private breakfast meeting at the St. Regis Hotel on July 8, 2003.

On Friday, in a press conference that bore a striking similarity to Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine, President Bush's spokesman Scott McClellan dutifully responded to reporters' questions about the disclosure. No, the increasingly robotic McClellan said, the White House will not comment on an ongoing case. But, he assured the assembled journalists, the President can declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. So, McClellan implied, it would have been perfectly legal for the President to have taken this action, which he could not, of course, comment on because this was an ongoing case (and so on).

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