Jim Hightower!! 'TOO MANY LEAKS OR TOO MUCH SECRECY?'

[in_cog_ni_to]

BY JIM HIGHTOWER

I love this guy!

<snip>
Goss, head of the CIA, published a piece on February 10 expressing outrage that Bush administration secrets were being leaked to the media by anonymous sources. In particular, he was tapping the fact that George W.'s secret and illegal program of spying on the phones of U.S. citizens had been made public. Leaking such classified information, wailed Porter, "can tip the terrorists" to technologies and tactics the CIA uses. He implied that leakers are low-life traitors.

Unfortunately for Goss, his indignant screed lacked much punch, because on that same day a story ran showing that one of the chief leakers of secret intelligence has been – Guess who? – the Bushites! It seems that Scooter Libby, the former top staffer to Dick Cheney, admitted to a grand jury that he had leaked secret information to reporters in 2003 in a political effort to show that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. That's not all – Libby testified that he was "authorized" to reveal the official secrets by his "superiors."

Hmmmm. Only three people in the White House could be considered Libby's superiors: Cheney, Karl Rove, and George himself! So, Porter, which of these are you calling a traitor? And, will you be calling them to account?

The problem for our democracy is not that there are too many "unauthorized" leaks, but that the Bushites are hiding too much from We the People. For example, who in the White House leaked Valerie Plame's name? How many times did Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff visit Bush's White House? Who was on Cheney's secret energy task force? Why not release the documents on White House preparedness for 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina? How about coming clean on torture and on the global network of secret prisons? What's up with all the no-bid contracts with Halliburton? And the list goes on ... and on ... and ...


http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-03-03/pols_hightower.html

[Arkansas Granny]

1. This article reminds me of an exchange between Tim Russert

and Jane Harman (the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee)on the February 12, 2005, Meet the Press concerning the secret NSA wiretaps:

MR. RUSSERT: The vice president said Congress would leak like a sieve. You couldn’t possibly brief that many people.

REP. HARMAN: I—I find that ironic, Tim, since one, these leaks came from the administration, nobody in Congress knew. Two, the White House declassifies the information it chooses to declassify, and there’s material in the newspapers that the vice president may have authorized his then-chief of staff Scooter Libby to talk about classified portions of the national intelligence program.