Friday, April 14, 2006

 

"Double-Secret Probation" Declassification?



Reading through Sidney Blumenthal's latest dissection of Bushco perfidy, one finds this gem:

The formal rules for declassification were amended by Bush's Executive Order 13292 of March 25, 2003, on "Classified National Security Information." Under any circumstances the president has the authority, as he always has, to unilaterally declassify official secrets and intelligence "in the public interest." But a decision to declassify a document normally passes through the originating agency and then through the Office of the National Security Advisor. Then the document is stamped declassified and the declassified order is appended to the document.

None of these procedures was followed in this case, which is why Libby's antenna was gyrating. He sought the advice of Cheney's counsel, David Addington, Libby's close ally. In approaching Addington, Libby must have known what he would hear. Addington is the foremost legal advocate in the White House of the idea that the president should be unbound, unchecked, unfettered in his authority, whether in the torture of detainees, domestic surveillance or any other matter. Unsurprisingly, Addington "opined that presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."

Only four people -- Bush, Cheney, Libby and Addington -- were privy to the declassification. It was kept secret from the director of central intelligence, the secretary of state and the national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, among others. Indeed, Hadley was arguing at the time for declassification of the NIE but was deliberately kept in the dark that it was no longer classified. Fitzgerald writes about Libby: "Defendant fails to mention ... that he consciously decided not to make Mr. Hadley aware of the fact that defendant himself had already been disseminating the NIE by leaking it to reporters while Mr. Hadley sought to get it formally declassified." Having Hadley play the fool became part of the game.

Here's a question I have no answer to: Given his newly-found "unitary executive" fetish, isn't the idea that the president can carve out huge essential portions of his own branch of government -- here, the national security apparatus -- and deliberately keep them in the dark about what's declassified and what isn't, sound a little hinky to you? (Granted, if Bush and Cheney were true to form, they've already materially lied to Fitzgerald's grand jury and/or the FBI, so this may well prove a moot point.)

I strongly suspect that Bush got a juvenile kick out of playacting "doublespy secret agent" in this whole affair. It would be ironic justice if his Agent Cody Banks hijinks are what ultimately trip him up enough to topple his administration entirely.

posted by Michael 11:36 PM