On 7 Apr 2006 16:00:52 GMT, Dave Hinz wrote:

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:24:07 GMT, John Emmons wrote:
Can you please provide a reference that supports your comments?

What specific law allows a president to reveal the name of a CIA or any
other intelligence operative to the press or to the public?

How was she an operative, exactly?


Plame was long out of the field, was riding a desk in the Puzzle
factory, and had been outed by her very own husband in his book,
months before any "leak" occured...and I use "leak" because it was
well known in Gammorha on the Potomic that she had been a spook.


Now on another front..are you lads aware that the "leak" being most
recently discussed, had NOTHING to do with Plame?
More on that in a moment

Experts: Alleged Bush leak legal, unusual

By The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON — Legal experts said President Bush had the unquestionable
authority to approve the disclosure of secret CIA information to
reporters but added the leak was highly unusual and amounted to using
sensitive intelligence data for political gain.

"It is a question of whether the classified National Intelligence
Estimate was used for domestic political purposes," said Jeffrey
Smith, a Washington lawyer who formerly served as general counsel for
the CIA.

In court papers filed late Wednesday, Special Counsel Patrick
Fitzgerald said Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, has testified Cheney told him Bush had
authorized the leak of secret information from the National
Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in summer 2003.

Experts said the power to classify and declassify documents in the
federal government flows from the president and is often delegated
down the chain of command. In March 2003, Bush signed an executive
order delegating declassification authority to Cheney.

There are about 4,000 people in the federal government with authority
to classify information, according to the National Archives.

The president's authority to keep and reveal secrets also is inherent
in his constitutional powers, says J. William Leonard, director of the
National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, and the
president does not have to follow any particular procedure in
declassifying information.

"It's his authority in the first place," Leonard said.

While Bush's use of classified information may create a political
problem for him, it's not a legal issue, said Mark Zaid, a Washington
lawyer who frequently represents CIA employees and others involved in
national-security issues.

As the author of the executive order governing how information is
classified, Bush can declassify something simply by declaring so, Zaid
said.

"Since the president is the one who issues the order, ergo he
obviously has the authority to classify and declassify information,"
Zaid said Thursday.

Bush had exercised his authority in cooperating with journalist and
author Bob Woodward in writing "Bush at War," an account of the
response to the attacks of Sept. 11. "That book is replete with
classified information" that Bush declassified by discussing it with
Woodward, Zaid says.

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Now..about the "leak" you leftist retards are ****ing and moaning
about....

W. House does not dispute Bush leak allegation
Fri Apr 7, 2006 4:11 PM ET13

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday left unchallenged a
prosecutor's disclosure that President George W. Bush authorized a
former top official, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to share intelligence data
on Iraq in 2003 with a reporter to counter Iraq war criticism.

Spokesman Scott McClellan insisted that Bush had the authority to
declassify intelligence and rejected charges from Democrats that he
did so selectively for political purposes.

"Declassifying information and providing it to the public when it is
in the public interest is one thing," McClellan told reporters during
a combative briefing. "But leaking classified information that could
compromise our national security is something that is very serious,
and there's a distinction."

Democrats seized on the issue, which has put Bush on the defensive at
a time when his popularity is slumping and the Iraq war is
increasingly unpopular. They accused the president, who has often
spoken of the damage done by leaks, of hypocrisy.

"President Bush's selective declassification of highly sensitive
intelligence for political purposes is wrong," said the House of
Representatives Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California.

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada demanded an explanation
from Bush, who has twice ignored shouted questions about the issue.

"Only the president can put this matter to rest. He must tell the
American people whether the Bush Oval Office is the place where the
buck stops, or the leaks start," Reid said.

The case is rooted in am investigation in which Libby, a former top
aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, is accused of obstruction of
justice and perjury in an investigation designed to discover who
leaked then-CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, emerged as a key critic of
Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, saying that the
president knowingly gave the American people information about Iraq's
alleged nuclear program that U.S. intelligence services knew was
untrue.

'PERSONAL PAY BACK'

Wilson said the administration deliberately leaked his wife's identity
to pay him back for his criticism.

The White House mounted an effort to respond to Wilson. On July 18,
2003, officials released portions of an October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate that said, among other things, that Iraq could
make a nuclear weapon in a year or less once it acquired sufficient
weapons-grade fissile material.

Inspectors who scoured Iraq after the U.S. invasion failed to find any
signs of a nuclear program, leading to accusations that Bush
manipulated intelligence in order to justify the war, a charge that
follows him to this day.

According to court papers made public this week, Libby testified to a
federal grand jury that Cheney had told him Bush authorized him to
disclose information from the secret National Intelligence Estimate to
a New York Times reporter.

The court documents did not say that Bush or Cheney authorized Libby
to disclose Plame's identity.

Libby resigned from the administration last October when he was
indicted by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. His trial is
expected to begin next January.

McClellan argued the release of the declassified information was very
different from what he called the potentially damaging leak of
information about Bush's domestic eavesdropping program which aims to
track phone calls and e-mails in the United States to suspected
terrorists abroad.

"Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that distinction are simply
engaging in crass politics," he said.

Democrats who are ****ing and moaning over this..are retards.


Gunner

"The importance of morality is that people behave themselves even if
nobody's watching. There are not enough cops and laws to replace
personal morality as a means to produce a civilized society. Indeed,
the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of
defense for a civilized society. Unfortunately, too many of us see
police, laws and the criminal justice system as society's first line
of defense." --Walter Williams