yet another thought on the Liar-in-Chiefs declassified leak.

[HereSince1628]

We know the "declassified" NIE actually contains misinformation. Was the sharing of this information yet another propaganda ploy, a deliberate attempt by the highest officials in the White House to continue to mislead the nation?

The effort to discredit Wilson was at minimum about covering up the reality that the evidence used to go to war was wrong and that Bush had ignored caveats and other concerns that undermined the quality of intelligence provided to the public as the cause for war. At the time of Wilson's op ed BushCo was heavily engaged
in fighting against public perceptions of Bush ranging from the pResidents having poor judgment by ignoring intelligence caveats to his being a bomb happy messianic maniac committed to taking the nation to war in order to reshape the politics of the Holy Lands/middle east.

Now, imagine you are a reporter. You are approached by a high White House official with classified information (perhaps it was declassified by presidential fiat, but that was done so recently that the classified nature of the stuff hasn't faded). Isn't this a reporter's wet dream? The White House is handing you the information you think will destroy anti-war arguments. That's one hell of an opportunity.

Regardless of your credentials, being treated to such a unique source of information would be a heady thing. Wouldn't many reporters assign credibility to the information just because of the source? Wouldn't many of those reporters suspend real criticism? What if your politics on the middle east lean in a particular way, say pro-war, wouldn't you set aside any criticism at all?

What a great situation for the mendacious masters of the pro-war propaganda machine in the White House. They have in their possession a document that contains information which by that time was highly suspected, if not known to be erroneous. Yet months earlier it had been a sensational media success when presented in the president's SOTU speech and by Colin Powell at the UN. It is the perfect stuff to reinforce the mistakes(?)/lies that took the country to war.

So you _intentionally_ release questionable information under the guise of a hot document to a susceptible (perhaps even willing) reporter(or reporters). You give her the chance of a 10 day head start on information that if used will raise her journalistic profile by enabling her to be out front among her colleagues countering Wilson's attack on the credibility of the rational to go to war. After those ten days you generally share the stuff.

It seems to me, we have in the Fitzgerald filing at least a good start at the evidence we need to successfully prosecute the argument that the WH intentionally released information they knew was not true. Moreover, they did it as a serial offense, which argues it was anything but accidental. On its face, the circumstance certainly looks a lot like a series of White House officials (Bush, Cheney, Libby) communicating with each other with the intent of planting a lie in the press in order to intentionally mislead the American public.

Isn't that plainly a conspiracy to lie to the American people?

[salin]

1. what I have found interesting ... is how many were given info

and refused to run with it. Plays along with the passing along info that was KNOWN to be false/trumped up... so much so that others in the press ignored it as its falseness (and the intent for pushing it) was so transparent.

[HereSince1628]

2. There was definitely a game afoot. I wonder about where exactly

she was "funded" and how informal Miller's support of BushCo was. At this point I have no reason to choose between Miller's being committed to a pro-war position from the start or bought and paid for by some pro-war faction.

[Whoa_Nelly]

3. And WHERE are the documents from the CIA that the information re: Plame

could be declassified? IF Plame's status as an active covert operative was declassified, there's a procedure that also includes the department/agency involved to present why or why not the information should be declassified. It's not a simple process, and involves several steps before it can be signed by POTUS to be declassified.

There HAS to be documentation to PROVE this information was declassified and WHEN!


http://tinyurl.com/ne43w
(This is the HTML version of a .pdf)

<snip>

B. Our nation’s democratic principles also require that the American people be informed of the activities of their Government; therefore, information may not be classified unless its disclosure reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security. If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, the information shall not be classified. If the classifying authority has a significant doubt about the appropriate level of classification, he or she will classify the information at the lower level. In addition, classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information.

C. The authority to classify original information at the Secret or Confidential level may be exercised only by the Secretary of Commerce and officials to whom Original Classification Authority (OCA) has been delegated. No departmental official is authorized to classify original information at the Top Secret level. Officials authorized to classify information at the Secret level are also authorized to classify information at the Confidential level.

[HereSince1628]

4. The NIE dicussed in Fitz' late Wed. filing have nothing to do with

Plame's status. Indeed in as much as the CIA leak was mentioned it was mentioned only in the context of being irrelavent to the charges against Libby.