Hillary Calls Bush's Intel Leak Nixonesque!

[AGENDA21]

As President Bush took questions from graduate students Monday, one of them raised a touchy subject that he had not yet publicly addressed — a court filing last week revealing that he had personally authorized the use of pre-war intelligence to rebut an administration critic. Bush said he would not talk about the court case of former White House aide I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, citing "a serious investigation." But the President did say why the White House had released part of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq when it was under attack by former ambassador Joseph Wilson and others in the summer of 2003.

"After we liberated Iraq, there was questions in people's minds about the basis on which I made statements, in other words, going into Iraq," Bush said at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in Washington. "So I decided to declassify the NIE for a reason. I wanted people to see what some of those statements were based on. I wanted people to see the truth and thought it made sense for people to see the truth.And that's why I declassified the document."

But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had a very different view of things. On Monday she accused Bush of declassifying national security information for political purposes and briefly invoked President Richard Nixon before backing off that explosive analogy. "Obviously it was done not just for political reasons, which sounds kind of everyday Washington politics," she told Al Hunt, Bloomberg's Washington bureau chief. "It was done to protect the decision makers from being held accountable for some of the information they used in the run up to the invasion of Iraq."

Senator Clinton, who faces reelection in November, told Bloomberg News in New York that Bush's authorization of the leaking of information to bolster his case on Iraq "was absolutely not the proper use" of the declassification process, according to a transcript provided by Bloomberg. "Presidents should know not to go too far," she added. "We saw it with Richard Nixon — claiming national security to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, to break into the Democratic National Committee. Well, here we have a president at least giving an implicit go ahead — "

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1182036,00.html?promoid=rss_nation

[MADem]

1. She's in a position to know--she was on the WATERGATE team

before she got married.

[ronnykmarshall]

2. I wuz thinkin' the same thing.

[AGENDA21]

5. Didnt know that....thanks.

[oasis]

3. Hill knows what to say and when to say it. (eom)

[CrazyForKucinich]

4. So shouldn't we Nixon Impeach? Or does she think...

Bush is going to resign? *rolleyes*