Clarification on "leaking", to a point

We are still waiting for many details surrounding "Leakgate" or "Plamegate", but an answer to my question in the previous post has been provided by Sidney Blumenthal in his article "The Slow-Motion Trap" on Salon.com.

Blumenthal writes,

In the setup for the leak, Fitzgerald writes, Cheney "advised defendant that the President specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE" and that that approval was a secret. Libby was a team player, but he was also anxious about a declassification that was "unique in his experience."

The formal rules for declassification were amended by Bush's Executive Order 13292 of March 25, 2003, on "Classified National Security Information." Under any circumstances the president has the authority, as he always has, to unilaterally declassify official secrets and intelligence "in the public interest." But a decision to declassify a document normally passes through the originating agency and then through the Office of the National Security Advisor. Then the document is stamped declassified and the declassified order is appended to the document.

None of these procedures was followed in this case, which is why Libby's antenna was gyrating. He sought the advice of Cheney's counsel, David Addington, Libby's close ally. In approaching Addington, Libby must have known what he would hear. Addington is the foremost legal advocate in the White House of the idea that the president should be unbound, unchecked, unfettered in his authority, whether in the torture of detainees, domestic surveillance or any other matter. Unsurprisingly, Addington "opined that presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document."

Only four people -- Bush, Cheney, Libby and Addington -- were privy to the declassification. It was kept secret from the director of central intelligence, the secretary of state and the national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, among others. Indeed, Hadley was arguing at the time for declassification of the NIE but was deliberately kept in the dark that it was no longer classified.

So, based on my criteria in the post below, I call that leaking. It's tantamount to spoiling the surprise of the b-day party but not telling any of the guests so that they still hide and yell surprise and the guest of honor has to pretend to be shocked. (Except, of course, it's illegal and unethical, not just poor party hosting.) It's not what they're claiming now, which is that they were responding to calls from the public for clarification on the need to invade Iraq so they declassified some intel (which, BTW, was totally bogus) and gave it to reporters. This is sneaky and smarmy and only a man who thinks that he can get away with anything ("If the President does it, it's not illegal" as someone famously said about Nixon)-- oh, wait, but that's the guy who's our President.

Two other interesting points in Blumenthal's article:

1) He points out eloquently (if not for the first time) the circular logic used in the run-up to the war. I wish I knew how to make a flowchart for this blog. Our intel says ABC, we give ABC to the Europeans, they print it in their papers, we tell it to our people and say, "Look, the Europeans think the same thing!" And in this case, Libby leaks to Miller (in separate conversations) that Saddam "has" WMD, she reports it in the New York Times, and then the Administration says, "Look, even the Times says the same thing! And if that lefty rag the Times is actually agreeing with us, then it must be true!" And frankly, I think there were a lot of us on the Left who trust the Times-- and when we saw them saying the same thing, we bought into it too. I think that might account for a few Senators that voted for the war that now wish they hadn't.

2) He quotes Colin Powell finally, finally speaking out saying, "Indeed, last week, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told journalist Robert Scheer that the notorious 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address concerning Iraq's supposed efforts to buy uranium -- the claim that former ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger to investigate -- were bogus. 'That was a big mistake,' Powell said. 'It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it.' ...Powell finally admitted publicly that the president spoke falsely about the reason for war, that there were interested parties inside the administration determined to put false words in his mouth, and that the secretary of state, knowing this, lacked the power to stop it." Now, there is something I thought would never happen. I knew in my heart that he was being railroaded, I just thought his loyalty to these people would make him take his criticism to his grave. Not a coward, just being reserved and dignified.

Powell seems to be on a roll, however, as Salon.com is also reporting that he is yet another retired general who is calling for Rumsfeld's resignation.

A Point of Contention on "Leaking"

[This is another letter I wrote to Salon. The topic was Libby's revelation that "Cheney told me that POTUS told him" to leak informaton from the NIE. The previous poster couldn't understand why everyone wasn't up in arms about this.]

I think maybe one of the reasons this isn't drawing the attention the last LW wanted is that it has a little bit for everyone to grab onto and back up their side. The Left obviously thinks this is evidence of lying and leaking, while the Right claims it proves nothing was leaked (because the NIE was at some point declassified).

But I need some help answering a question, and I think others do too. It's a question that people keep almost asking, some of the WH press corps came close with McClellan, but they can't seem to find the right words:

Is it technically possible for the POTUS (or anyone in a similar position of being able to classify/declassify intel) to leak? Is a leak defacto declassification? Or is there some official protocol for declassifying something-- a paper has to be signed, a memo sent out, the folders changed from top-secret red to help-yourself blue-- that until it's completed, anyone who talks is leaking?

If I throw a suprise party for my roommate and his mother clues him in, she's spilling my secret. But if I mention it, as the partygiver, am I leaking it and ruining the surprise, or changing the party to a non-surprise party?

It seems to come down to this mysterious protocol. What happens when the POTUS wants something declassified? Does he have to sign something? Tell other people? Buy new folders? If the answer is yes, then he CAN leak and probably did. If the answer is no, and the act of saying he wants it declassified makes it so and the rest is just tidying up the paperwork for posterity, then he didn't actually leak anything, he was just walking the line in a smarmy way. Like, god love him, our former leader questioning the definition of "is." Oh, Bill...

Settling that would help us have a better discussion, instead of each side saying it's their proof, which tends to shut conversation down, or at least bog it down into arguing over that very point.

But a better question might be-- is it even true? Cheney, who we know had a real bee in his bonnet about Wilson, apparently told Libby to go out and discredit Wilson (using either very selective quotes from a classified NIE, or outing his CIA wife, it's unclear at this time). Libby thought this was hinky and tried to make sure he covered his butt by asking Cheney for Presidential orders. Cheney went away and came back saying, "It's fine, he said it was OK."

Does anyone else find this strange? It's like an older sibling trying to get a younger sibling to do something stupid, who balks, and the older goes off and comes back and says, "Mom says it's OK, just do it." Or when you go to a car dealership and your salesman keeps disappearing into the back and returning with proclamations from a mysterious "manager" that we all know isn't even back there.

I think the more dangerous part of all this is Cheney appearing to run amok and possibly lying about what the POTUS did or did not approve. And because we're arguing over the rituals of declassification, he's getting away with it.

OK, Back off, Lou Dobbs.

First, I have to say, I love Lou Dobbs. He rocks my world every evening at 5pm CST. But when Congress attempted to address a big, red, hotbutton issue for Lou, he was so happy he didn't seem to understand why people took to the streets. It's really about the Sensenbrenner bill.

I think the real underlying hotbutton in the Sensenbrenner bill is that it criminalized aiding one's fellow man. Whatever you do to an illegal (make him a felon, etc.), it outraged me that I, an American citizen, could get in trouble for giving a starving man a sandwich. What's next, soup kitchen workers are held responsible for checking IDs like a bartender? It may be necessary to enforce labor laws and punish those who hire illegals (if the lure of the job isn't there, that would go a long way to solving this problem) and perhaps that might need to extend to those who provide long-term housing (primarily in a business context, as, a landlord renting to illegals). But faced with the choice in the moment, I WILL give a sandwich to a starving man, I WILL give water to a thirsty man, and I WILL invite inside my warm home a man standing out in the snow. (These are meant to be proverbial statements, I would give more than a sandwich and water, and it rarely snows in Texas, and not enough to threaten someone's life.) And I'm just a regular ol' citizen. If I were part of the church, a pastor or a priest or a nun, I wouldn't just be doing that to be kind, but because kindness is the essential part of my job. The real reason that the Church got involved is not because they want to meddle in politics, but because the politics threatened to meddle in their most basic, fundemental mission-- to help the helpless, right there, in the moment, without asking for papers or really caring what Man's law has to say about it. What's next? They can't help drug addicts or prostitutes on the street because drugs and prostitution are illegal and therefore those people are criminals? This is ridiculous. But this really outrageous point of legislature is really just in the Sensenbrenner bill and I don’t think that any other part of the debate, short of the silly idea that we would round up 11 (or 12, or 20) million hiding illegals at gunpoint and ship them back where they came from–as if we could pull that off, we couldn’t even get a few thousand people out of New Orleans who were holding up signs saying here we are, please come get us– would have driven anyone to the streets or gotten the Church involved.

I have a little story. When I was in high school, I turned into my neighborhood's entrance to find a man whose car had run out of gas and he had managed to coast off the road and into our entrance, where he got stuck. I was young and naive and had never heard of Ted Bundy (who used to pretend to have car trouble or other issues) and so I immediately jumped out of the car to help. I ended up using my car to push his safely out of the way, then we went and got my mom who got us a gas can and helped us get some gas for his car. Now this might have been foolish (Ted Bundy) and we did drive with a container of gas in the front seat (boom), but I will never regret helping this man. Never mind that his English was quite broken, never mind that he might have been legal or illegal, never mind that he smelled like hard labor and his car should have been in the junkyard, he needed help and I helped him. And I defy anyone to put me in jail for that. I would go with a bigger smile than Tom Delay at his booking.

Florida Teens Declare Majors

Soon (I guess if it passes), fourteen-year-olds in Florida will be declaring high school majors and minors. I actually like this idea a lot (who cares that it comes from a Bush?) for several reasons.

1. Focus. This will help kids focus that their high school education is a step towards actually creating a satisfying life, not just a social arena where the only real goals are good numbers on your "permanent records" (and not too many highjinks) , and generally surviving. As Jack Cafferty said on CNN the other day (I have to paraphrase here), "I majored in clearing up my acne and losing my virginity."

Not that this will end all of that. But it will give the whole educational part of it a sense of purpose beyond the abstract idea of "college". There are plenty of state requirements, but fill them with purpose. Want to be a lawyer? Take Latin as your foreign language. Want to run a retail store? Take Spanish or whatever second language you get a lot of in your area. Got to take a writing course? Knowing whether you're going into business or theatre or journalism could really help you take a class that will appeal to your interests. And even if you don't intend on going to college, it will help you see high school as a tool to get you somewhere.

2. Makes it more interesting. I was heading into this point in the last one. When you choose your classes based on where you're headed, you're more likely to find classes that hold your interest. And when the past plural subjunctive of some verb starts to numb your mind, you can at least take heart that it will be of some help to you in the future.

3. Hopefully will cause new classes to open up. For example, the writing class I mentioned in #1. Say you are going into theatre, you would be more interested in a fiction or poetry class than a journalism class. But if there were enough theatre majors and minors, maybe the cirriculum would start offering play analysis classes and play writing classes. Or say you want to run a retail store-- the basic class in economics wouldn't help you as much as a Small Business Economics class.

4. Get kids thinking about life=productivity instead of life=leisure. This is kind of like the focus concept in #1, but is unique to Florida. I went to middle and high school in Florida, and one of the reasons, it seems to me, that it's hard to focus is that everyone around you is focused on leisure. The retirees are playing golf, etc., and enjoying themselves; the tourists are all wrapped up in having a good time; and many if not most of the industries in Florida (especially the ones that high school kids are exposed to) are leisure-centered. It's all souvenir shops and restaurants and jet ski rentals and frozen yogurt stands (that was my job in HS). Not to say the guy who owns the surfboard shop isn't working hard for a living, but the focus of his living is surfing, i.e., leisure. You're just surrounded by other people playing all the time. It gives you the strange perspective that leisure is really the only goal, that you do it every second you can tear yourself away from the other crap the Man is making you do for the rent. And for us teens, every warm sunny "Beach Day" (yeah, there were a lot of them) was an excuse to ditch school.

[Now, maybe that's right. Maybe you could argue that goofing off really should be the goal. You hippie. Kidding! I'm just saying, this primary leisure focus is a phenomenon that's unique to FLA and to other tourist traps like it.]

5. Preparing kids for productive lives that might not have anything to do with college. I once had a friend from Germany who explained that they have a similar system. Early on (in your early teens) you take tests and are assigned a track which you follow throughout your education. Some tracks lead to college, some lead to apprenticeships in different trades, etc. I admit that sounded both a bit draconian and a bit communist (I think they assigned careers too) when I first heard about it, but the American version sounds much better. It's driven more by individual choice than others' assessment of you.

Still, there are many kids in public school who don't want to or don't plan to go to college. Maybe they just aren't good students (not bad people, just not setting any records in the brain department) or their circumstances aren't heading that way (I'm going to help run the family business) or their dreams aren't heading that way ("My life's dream is to open a surf shop!" or to train horses or cut hair or whatever). High School can be a very depressing and seemingly pointless endeavor to these kids. Everything seems to be aimed at propelling you to college, but if you know you aren't going, it makes you feel like what's the point?

But to embrace high school and say to yourself, "I know I don't want to go to college, so this is my last chance to educate myself, I'm going to make the most of it." And then you take the Small Business course and Greek (we were in Tarpon Springs, where that was the major second language) and you go on field trips to local surf shops and talk to the owners and do reports on the industry and make up a business plan.

Not that everything should be so tailored. Even a surf shop owner should know who Charles Dickens and Washington Irving and Mozart and Edward R. Murrow and Arthur Miller are. And we all should learn the mistakes of Vietnam that led to the Powell Doctrine. And playing an instrument and learning to draw and playing a sport and all of these things are also important. But there are already gym classes for the physically goofy (I took something called recreational sports where we learned a little ping pong, a little tennis, a little softball, you know, stuff you might do with friends or coworkers) and other slightly tailored classes, I don't see why we can't have a little more of that. Besides, it's not necessary that the classes be so tailored, but that the student knows why they are there and what they are trying to get out of it, so they can tailor the classes themselves. For instance, you have to write a report on a famous person. The theatre major might pick Joe Papp, while the small business entrepenuer-type might pick Donald Trump. The kids already can do that, but they might not think of it, and their teacher might not either. Having declared a major, it puts this on the front of their minds, and knowing a student's major would help the teacher reach them and give them ideas.

I'm interested to see how it works out.

Update: On Thursday, May 5, 2006 the Florida Legislature passed this bill overwhelmingly. It's still up for going on Jeb Bush's desk but it was his bill so there's no doubt it will pass.

The measure also includes fourth year of math and career counseling in middle school. CNN is also reporting, "The measure also would set up a ready-to-work program for high school students who don't plan to go to college, professional development programs for principals and special classes for struggling students." They also changed the language from "majors and minors" to "major fields of interest", I think to reduce the pressure on kids from having to choose so young.