Who Has Declassification Power

[Ammonium]

Concerning the plame case and the ongoing leak case. I have been trying to figure out if Bush or Cheney have the power to declassify information at will. Previously Cheney has claimed he has such power under executive order, but I've only been able to track down EO 13292. which states

Declassification authority is defined in Section 6.1(l) of E.O. 13292.
It is granted to: "(1) the official who authorized the original classification...; (2) the originator's current successor in function;
(3) a supervisory official of either; or (4) officials delegated declassification authority in writing by the agency head or the senior agency official."

This to me says that basically the VP can only declassify information which either A) He classified himself or B) The office of the Vice President classified, which Cheney would have to have a hand in.

If an agent is working for the CIA undercover, does the president have the power to snap his fingers and declassify her or does he have to go to the CIA and tell them to do it?


Ultimately, I'm trying to challenge someone on turbobricks.com offtopic section who contended the VP and President have the power to do this and thus have done nothing wrong. I invite everyone to come by to turbobricks.com (we've Volvo lovers :-P) and engage in some of the conversation over there. I do my best over there but it'd be nice to have some back up ya know? :-)

[papau]

1. No One - not even the Pres- can declassify that which is by law classified

The pres can declassify all that is classified by the Presidents executive order - but even here the Courts have ruled that while the Pres can change an EO at any time, he must follow the EO procedures while it is still in effect.

So did he follow any procedure?

And CIA identity is classified under the law - not by executive order - so the Pres has no right to declassify.

[Ammonium]

2. Thank you

Thanks for the quick reply!

This is what I suspected as I could find no precedent for this kind of disclosure, even in executive order.

Basically, it would appear the president has disclosed classified information, which would be a felony. Fantastic!