What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
SPECIAL REPORT: How Iraq is Being
Destroyed
"A
weak Iraq suits many." Three years after the US attack,
Iraq is breaking apart. Eyewitness report from Patrick Cockburn
in Irbil. One of the great
left journalists of his time, he was on the front lines in Korea
and Vietnam. Chris Reed on Wilfred Burchett, the man who made
Murdoch foam at the mouth.Katrina
washes whitest. Bill Quigley in New Orleans reports tales of
lunacy and hope. CounterPunch
Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember,
we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition
of CounterPunch. Please
support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter,
which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or
by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions
are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
A
Modified, Limited, Hang-Out of Slanted, Partially Declassified
Information ...
The Gang That Couldn't
Leak Straight
By LAWRENCE R. VELVEL
In a court filing by prosecutor Patrick
Fitzgerald, it has now become public that, according to Scooter
Libby, George Bush authorized the Vice President's chief of staff
in July 2003 to disclose previously highly confidential information
-- to leak this information -- in order to help make Bush's case
for war. The information is said to have come from a supersecret
90 page document called a National Intelligence Estimate. The
leaked information is a particular part of the Estimate which
supported going to war, though one gathers that other parts,
that were not released, were contrary in import and did not support
going to war.
Because Bush is said to have authorized disclosure of -- leaking
of -- a part of the report which supported his decision for war,
the claim is being made that it was not unlawful for Libby to
have told one (or more?) reporters about the information. The
President, it is said, has broad authority to declassify information,
and did so here. What is more, it is said that this was opined
to Libby by a true creep, Cheney's right wing wacko lawyer, David
Addington, whom Libby regarded as an expert on national security
law. And, as a general matter, both now and previously the media,
with the exception of a recent editorial in The Times, seems
to have automatically swallowed the notion that a high level
official with power over classification can authorize disclosure
on the spot, as it were, of previously classified information:
the issue arose a while back, when it was thought Cheney might
have been the one who authorized disclosure regarding Valerie
Plame and Bush's action was not yet publicly known.
There is one point which jumps out at me, even though the (incompetent)
media has so far been blind to it. Does the governing rule really
provide, is it intended to provide, can it truly be lawful for
it to provide, that the President can, on the spot, authorize
disclosure of previously classified information that supports
his position, while withholding disclosure of classified information
which opposes it, even information in the very same document
or conceivably on the very same page? Is this what classification
is really all about? Is this what it is supposed to accomplish
or is intended to accomplish? Why am I dubious? Why do I think
that, at least as embodied in law, as opposed to the evil chicanery
that is an every day matter in Washington, this is not the purpose
of classification and must be, indeed, a horrible abuse of it?
-- in all justice probably a literally criminal abuse of it.
One recognizes, of course, that what Bush did is, as indicated,
just another example of the abuses and moral corruption that
have become standard among politicians in our country. In this
sense Bush's action is related to the need for a third party
because the current two parties have unalterably become moral
and ethical cesspools. And one is further aware that the commonness
of political abuses in Washington is why the media appear to
regard Bush's action as just more business as usual, even if
a particularly hypocritical example of the same. Yet it remains
obvious, does it not, that if the kind of chicanary being discussed
here is the intention or result of the classification system,
then that system gives the Executive an awesome power to fool
the entire citizenery and Congress, as appears to have been done
here by the lies about WMDs. For the Executive will simply reveal,
one sidedly, the classified information which supports its desires
while keeping secret the classified information that undercuts
them, all of which was done here. Congress and the public will
know only one side of the facts, will correspondingly lack knowledge
of the other side, will be disabled from making knowledgeable
decisions, and, incidentally, the first amendment's purpose of
fostering knowledgeable discussion and decisionmaking will largely
be thwarted. All of which happened in large degree here with
regard to WMDs and going to war.
It has been as well, an unforgettable
irony, and an example of the abuse of power and moral corruption
which a double standard brings, that George Bush has set the
feds to work to investigate and punish leading whistleblowers
who have opposed his actions by revealing things he did not want
revealed, e.g., the NSA's secret spying on civilians, while he
has himself authorized leaks of secret information that serves
his political purposes.
When Bush authorizes leaks,
his henchmen say, it is in the national interest--even if it
involves efforts to mislead Congress and the people into an insupportable
war.
But when others do it, the
henchmen say, it jeopardizes national security--even if it involves
whistleblowing on secret spying on American citizens, or whistleblowing
on the CIA's abominable use of secret prisons overseas.
So it strikes me that the kind of double standard we are discussing
here simply cannot legitimately be the intent of the classification
system. The system cannot legitimately have the intent or purpose
of allowing the President to authorize disclosure on the spot
of classified information which supports his desires, while withholding
information contrary to his desires which can be in the same
document or even on the same page, and of thereby allowing him
far more easily to bend Congress and the people to his will by
denying them information about the other side of the issue and
denying them the ability to know and knowledgeably debate both
sides of the matter.
One wonders: Has the prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald, considered it?
If he has, what is his conclusion (which we could find out in
due course if there were further indictments or in the course
of a trial). If he has considered the matter, has the prosecutor
determined that the classification system is intended to permit
the kind of gravely abusive double standard being discussed here?
Has he determined that the classification system isn't so intended,
or that it isn't so intended but that leaks are nonetheless so
ubiquitous in Washington, are so much a part of the morally corrupt
political/journalistic life there, that they should not be punished
even though they are crimes? Has he considered the possibility
that Bush has committed a criminal act and should be brought
to justice for a deliberate legal violation of the classification
system? Has he considered this and rejected it? What does Fitzgerald
think anyway?
Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of Massachusetts School
of Law. He can be reached at velvel@mslaw.edu.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.