Thursday, May 18, 2006

 

Daisy Chain Leak By Leaking Head Proper


This business of classified information seems to confuse the pundits, but it is really very simple. The government says what is secret and what is not, and they have stamps for that. In fact, you can stamp over a prior stamp, and the latest one rules. We saw in the March 13 post how the 30 secret reviewers in the secret program in the secure facility were removing documents that had been stamped "declassified" from the public shelves, restoring denied access. Now here is the key point. The reviewers could have stamped "reclassified" over the "declassified" stamp but they didn't bother. First, since these documents were determined to have been improperly declassified in the first place, they were still classified, making the stamp unnecessary. Second, they didn't have a stamp for that.

And just like the stamp for "declassified" is merely a temporary convenience, it is not necessary for a proper official to make something not secret any more. Now you can quibble about who is a proper official. Like they say: "Don't try this at home!" But someone has to be proper, and no matter where you draw the line, POTUS is "proper". In this administration anyway. So, clearly President Bush can declassify stuff, and no stamp is necessary. Some things would be hard to stamp anyway.

So, according to court papers, The Scoot testified that POTUS authorized his shotgun The Dick to authorize The Scoot to release to Judy Miller, the NYT reporter, previously secret stuff about all the WMDs Saddam had, and, to suck in the tabloids, the name of that really cute spy. Judith's notes had "Valerie Flame". That is close enough for me. But we digress.

So what is wrong with that? PODUS can not only release stuff, at which point it is no longer secret, but can also say who else can do it. Even if he had a stamp, and of course he could if he wanted to, you wouldn't know what to stamp here. As an aside, Judy was not authorized by the NYT to report on WMDs any more, due apparently to some perceived gullibility problem, but who says the NYT is running the country?

Here is the way Scott McClellan put it: "The president believes the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter. And I think that's why it's important to draw a distinction here. Declassifying information and providing it to the public, when it is in the public interest, is one thing. But leaking classified information that could compromise our national security is something that is very serious. And there is a distinction.. And thank goodness we have a White House that gets that distinction."

That works for me. And I agree with the Scottster. If you don't get it, you are guilty of "crass politics". But keep that confidential.

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