The Plame Page

White House Tries to Quell Anger Over Leak Claim
David Stout, NY Times Yes, I would say they will have to come up with some kind of valid defense for an authorization to leak even if it was 'just the NIE' for 2002.
The argument seems to be that it wasn’t a leak because Bush declassified and Bush didn’t know because he only declassified the NIE on some uncommented on date. Hmmm…
The AP reports that ‘Bush merely instructed Cheney to ‘get it out’ and left the details to him…”AP: Lawyer: Bush left leak details to Cheney

President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics, but he did not specifically direct that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, be the one to disseminate the information, an attorney knowledgeable about the case said Saturday.
Bush merely instructed Cheney to "get it out" and left the details to him… …It is not known when the conversation between Bush and Cheney took place. The White House has declined to provide the date when the president used his authority to declassify the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document that detailed the intelligence community's conclusions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq....Because Bush declassified the intelligence document, the White House does not view Libby's conversations about it as a leak. But that determination is difficult to make without knowing precisely when Bush decided to declassify the information.

Okay…so…didn’t Bush think about the fact that the Plame leak might have been part of the Iraqi/Niger NIE declassification? Couldn’t he have cleared this up by simply stating that he declassified the NIE and a mistake was made due to that declassification? Or did he actually declassify it later and if we knew the actual date several people would look guilty as all hell? Many questions, too few answers…
Tom Maguire has this to say about it and he seems quite annoyed by lefty blogoshere:

So - Libby hasn't said that Cheney ordered him to out Plame; Tenet hasn't said that he warned Cheney that Plame was covert - this is quite a compelling case that is coming together. That said, Fitzgerald did speak with Addington (an attorney in the Office of the Vice President who has been moved up to Libby's old spot), Bush and Cheney, so we can presume that Libby's story was not flatly contradicted. But did Bush and Cheney respond with "I don't recall that? We don't know.

I guess Maguire is concluding, and doing a pretty good job of it, that he believes there was no conspiracy to discredit Wilson or out Plame. I don't believe that for a second. Maguire does go on to do a sentence-by-sentence slamback of the AP article:

(AP)"...Q: Now that the story is out that Bush and Cheney put Libby in play, are the president or the vice president expected to be called to testify at Libby's trial?

A. The prosecution and the defense have not signaled their intentions. "
(Maguire)"Put Libby in play"? As the story eventually notes (see MORE, below), the timeline is hazy at best. This is partly because, at the time Libby testified, Special Counsel Fitzgerald was unaware of Libby's chats with Judy Miller and Bob Woodward in June 2003; consequently, Fitzgerald's questions to Libby about his conversations with reporters focused on July, and the issue of whether Libby was cleared to talk with Woodward did not arise.
As a result, it is hard to judge whether Libby began leaking and then sought authorization, or the reverse. That is assuming that the authorization even occurred, and is not a convenient ex post fiction (The Anon Lib wonders about this).

If the Anon Lib wonders this does Tom Maguire as well. I think this is a pretty slippery slope either way.
1. If Libby leaked then sought authorization
2. If Bush mentioned it in passing and so doing authorized it (again, under Third Reich Law this means it is so ordered or in this case declassified)
Neither is the way the framers planned or wrote it and regardless of which way it happened both ways are pretty far from kosher.

Libby passed the information about the document to New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. It was 10 days later, on July 18, when the same portions of the document that Libby discussed with Miller were released publicly.

This date is far less important than the Woodward date which was in June. If the White House declassified the NIE in July than Libby sought it post leak. If Bush declassified it in June than Libby had authority to ‘leak’ some info and Bush should have fessed up to the cause of the possible Plame error three years ago.

On another note – I guess there will be no graymail defense success afterall:
CIA Leak Judge Says No to Secret Arguments

Walton said the government may in some cases present the court the actual classified information that Libby wants for his defense without letting the defendant and his lawyers see it. The judge would then determine whether some of the deletions or substitutions that the government is making are proper. "Despite the fact that the defendant is a former national security official and some of his defense team hold security clearances, this does not entitle them to view documents that exceed the level of their security clearances or documents that may discuss particularly sensitive issues with profound national security implications," the judge wrote.

Since Judge Walton will be viewing the documents first, he can determing what Libby will need and what needs to remain blacked out for the purposes of ‘national security’. This must be a blow to the Libby defense team even though it looks the other way around.

From Firedoglake:

Hypocrisy has a way of catching up to you at the most inopportune time, doesn’t it? You know, like when you are down to 36% in the polls, before the story of your sneaky, half-truth maneuver ever hit the news wires? I bet George Bush is a peach of a guy to be around the weekend. Here’s a sampling of this morning’s headlines on the Leaker In Chief

here Thank Chis Hardin Smith for this roundup of news.

Comment
Posted by: Tom Maguire | April 8, 2006 10:38 PM
I am troubled by this:

If Bush declassified it in June than Libby had authority to ‘leak’ some info and Bush should have fessed up to the cause of the possible Plame error three years ago.

Obviously you are aware of the difference between the NIE leak and the Plame leak, so why blur thenm here?

And even the WaPo has noted that in Fitzgerald's filing Bush got a bit of a pass:

During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser [i.e., Libby, who had both jobs] had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment...

"The President was unaware" should be inconsistent with Bush authorizing the Plame leak.