Intelligence . . . politicized?

Too bad the Scooter Trial isn't until next year. Today, David Sanger has some sort of contemplative piece on the administration's use of classified leaks for public relations. More importantly, Murray Waas outlines how Libby will defend himself in a huge piece:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Those silly old classification laws. Who needs 'em?

Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

Can anybody say: systematic politicization of Top Secret intelligence? I know it was only supposed to be one measely little NOC agent at CIA -- suspect Democrats to a man, of course -- but this sure seems to upend last year's efforts to downplay any and every little facet of this case among the character attacks.

The public correspondence does not mention the identities of the "superiors" who authorized the leaking of the classified information, but people with firsthand knowledge of the matter identified one of them as Cheney. Libby also testified that he worked closely with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in deciding what information to leak to the press to build public support for the war, and later, postwar, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence.

And it's only a matter of time before his lawyers start up the obligatory cable news spin sessions with this stuff to provide public prep. More Waas:

The new disclosure that Libby has claimed that the vice president and others in the White House had authorized him to release information to make the case to go to war, and later to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence, is significant for several reasons. First, it significantly adds to a mounting body of information that Cheney played a central and personal role in directing efforts to counter claims by Wilson and other administration critics that the Bush administration had misused intelligence information to go to war with Iraq.

Second, it raises additional questions about Libby's motives in concealing his role in leaking Plame's name to the press, if he was in fact more broadly authorized by Cheney and others to rebut former Ambassador Wilson's charges.

Going on this, the White House will have to calculate a fairly substantial probability that Libby is going to turn some kind of state's evidence if Fitzgerald broadens his investigation beyond the Plame leak. To establish a conspiracy, that is exactly what he would have to do.

(HT Josh Marshall)

Comments

[M. Douglas Wray]

Crimminal. Period.

Cheney should step down RIGHT NOW.