THE PRESIDENT:Yes. Let me just say something about
leaks in Washington. There are too many leaks of classified information
in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in
the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a
leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the
person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.
I must say today has left me a little breathless. Who the gods would
destroy they first drive insane. Looks like that might be happening
with both Bushites and Dems. Bushites insanely arrogant and aggressive,
Dems insanely deluded.
DeLay may have become insanely arrogant. He sends goons out to very
goonishly and violently break up a standard every day political rally,
pushes old ladies in the face, and all recorded for TV. That clip
better be on the news all over the country. It is an odd start for
Reverand DeLays ministry in Christ, I must say.
At some point, Dems must react, somehow, someway. Many of us have
been predicting that the Bushites would come after the Dems viciously
no matter what the Dems did. I did not think that it would be this
early though.
Libby's story doesn't directly implicate the president in the
Plame leak. But the latest revelations contrast rather sharply with the
assurances provided by White House press secretary Scott McClellan back
in the fall of 2003, when the administration was still resisting the
appointment of a special prosecutor or independent counsel to probe the
leak of Plame's identity. On Sept. 29, 2003, Helen Thomas asked him
whether "the president has tried to find out who outed the CIA agent?
And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?"
In his most patronizing tone, McClellan replied, "Helen, that's
assuming a lot of things. First of all, that is not the way this White
House operates. The President expects everyone in his administration to
adhere to the highest standards of conduct. No one would be authorized
to do such a thing." Asked whether the president knew anything beyond
what the media had reported, McClellan said, "We don't have any
information [about the leak] that's been brought to our attention
beyond what we've seen in the media reports. I've made that clear." He
emphasized that the president knew nothing about the leak, repeating, "We have nothing beyond those media reports to suggest there is White
House involvement."
The press secretary bristled when Thomas and other reporters
suggested that the president had reacted too passively to the leak, and
seemed unconcerned about its implications for national security and
Plame's safety.
"Absolutely, the President believes that this is a serious matter
when you're talking about the leak of classified information," said
McClellan. "The leak of classified information, yes, you're absolutely
right, can compromise sources and methods. That's why the President
takes it very seriously, and we've always taken it very seriously."
That was the famous press briefing when McClellan exonerated Rove,
while promising that any official responsible for the leak would be
fired. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would
no longer be in this administration," he said, speaking for the
president.
How will McClellan explain away Libby's testimony!"
The latest filing in the Libby case is a doozy, according to the NYSun
this morning. If Libby was being truthful in his testimony about this,
and if Cheney wasn't misleading him in his assertion that President
Bush authorized Libby to leak selected portions of the NIE to the press
(specifically Judy Miller), then I think we've discovered a very good
reason for Fitz to have met with the President's attorney just prior to
Libby's indictment.
A former White House aide under indictment for
obstructing a leak probe, I. Lewis Libby, testified to a grand jury
that he gave information from a closely-guarded "National Intelligence
Estimate" on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the
specific permission of President Bush, according to a new court filing
from the special prosecutor in the case. Read the rest of this entry
This sounds to me like grounds for impeachment. The 'President' violated national security for political reasons.
Of course, this is only one of many crimes that Bush has committed,
many much more serious than this, but it is tied into them. The
manipulation of national security secrets was a central part of Bush's
campaign to lie his way into the Iraq war.
Scotty's head is going to spin a mile a minute on this one. This is
HUGE. I even sorta feel sorry for what's in store for him. Well, not
really.
There you have it. Bush is now officially implicated in the chain of
events that led to the outing of a CIA agent for political reasons. No
one has proved that Bush ordered Plame's name released, but this story
demonstrates how casual he was with classified information when it came
to spreading his false justifications for war. If the uranium story was
so important to Bush, imagine how angry he must have been at Wilson:
One of the facts Mr. Libby said he planned to disclose to Ms. Miller
was that the estimate, produced in October 2002, concluded that Iraq
was "vigorously trying to procure uranium." This contention was sharply
at odds with Mr. Wilson's op-ed piece which argued there was no
evidence of such a procurement effort, at least on a trip he took to
Africa at the CIA's request.
Yes, it would be a slam dunk of anyone was going to hold Bush
accountable to the law. But he's a proud lawbreaker now, out and proud.
So sharing the NIE with improper people? Hell, he showed Bandar
sensitive information about our war plans and the wingers didn't blink.
