BUSH, FITZGERALD, PLAME, AND CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
Byron York
The Corner
I confess to being a little baffled by the excitement over the revelation, in Patrick Fitzgerald's latest filing, that Vice President Dick Cheney told Lewis Libby that President Bush had authorized Libby to discuss some parts of the National Intelligence Estimate with reporters. First of all, it should be made clear -- as it has not been in some discussions -- that Fitzgerald does not say that Bush authorized Libby to say anything about Valerie Plame. As a matter of fact, on page 27, Fitzgerald writes that as late as September 2003, "the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President's Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson's CIA employment..."
As for leaking portions of the National Intelligence Estimate, yes, it was classified, although it would later be declassified. But it should be remembered that when the president decides to make something public, then it can be made public. In the Plame case, there has been much discussion of the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. Would anyone argue that this disclosure was unauthorized?
Also, it's useful to remember what was happening at the time of the so-called leak. There was an enormous clamor over the "16 words" in the State of the Union address, and about pre-war intelligence in general. The administration was in the process of declassifying various pre-war intelligence matters. In the midst of that came the specific accusations of Joseph Wilson in the pages of the July 6, 2003 New York Times. How was the White House to answer them? On pages 23 and 24 of the motion, Fitzgerald describes what Libby was authorized to tell reporter Judith Miller during their July 8, 2003 meeting, two days after Wilson's op-ed was published:
<<< Defendant testified that he thought he brought a brief abstract of the NIE’s key judgments to the meeting with Miller on July 8. Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium....Defendant advised Miller that Wilson had reported that he had learned that in 1999 an Iraqi delegation visited Niger and sought to expand commercial relations, which was understood to be a reference to a desire to obtain uranium. Later during the discussion about Wilson and the NIE, defendant advised Miller of his belief that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. >>>
Now the fact that an envoy had been sent to Africa, that that envoy was Joseph Wilson, that he had been exploring possible Iraqi overtures to obtain uranium, and that he had reached some conclusions about the matter -- all that was pretty much out of the bag by the time Libby met Miller on July 8, wasn't it? And, by the way, who had let it out of the bag? That's not to say that Joseph Wilson leaked classified information; he did not reveal, for example, all of his contacts during the trip, and apparently those remain classified. Of course, Libby didn't leak that, either. In any event, the basic facts of the trip and Wilson's conclusions -- precisely the matters Libby wanted to discuss with Judith Miller -- were quite public.
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