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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (7022)	4/10/2006 5:07:04 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

So what's behind the kerfuffle over the "leak" that isn't a leak, in which President Bush is said to have declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate in order to rebut Joe Wilson's dodgy claims? Sarah Peck of Somerville, Mass., offers a clue, in a letter to the editor in Saturday's New York Times (third letter): President Bush does in fact have the legal right to declassify information at any time. This does not make his disclosure morally defensible. The president claimed that any person responsible for this leak would be removed from his administration. Is the president willing to stay true to his words, and admit the seriousness of his own offense? Actually, the promise to which Peck alludes in her second paragraph has nothing to do with the NIE but involved the "leak" of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA employee, which was supposedly at the root of the kerfuffle. The evidence is overwhelming that Plame was a mere paper-pusher, not a covert agent as her lesser half, Wilson, had insinuated. It may be that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and some in the press are trying to keep alive the Plame kerfuffle by way of innuendo--by pointing to the "leak" that wasn't really a leak and that had nothing to do with Plame so as to confuse people like Sarah Peck into thinking the president did something wrong. We've received numerous reader emails since Friday that evince similar confusion. more at: opinionjournal.com