April 12, 2006

Scandal! Bush Gives Press Accurate Information

Here is the latest “scandal” involving deplorable behavior by George W. Bush: It seems the president authorized the distribution of accurate information to the news media.

And you thought Watergate was big.

The latest media storyline – something has to stick eventually, right? – is that Bush, who despises leaks of classified information, “leaked” information to rebut charges by famous CIA spouse Joe Wilson about intelligence related to Iraq.

Bush the scourge of leaks is himself a leaker! What did he leak and when did he leak it?

Wait. Here’s an even better question. What is a leak? Here’s my answer: A leak is the unauthorized distribution of information that isn’t supposed to be distributed. Like, say, when someone tells the New York Times about methods we’re using to find out what terrorists are up to. You’re not supposed to reveal that. That’s a leak.

And who decides what you’re not supposed to reveal? The president. Why does he make these decisions? Ostensibly because it is vital to national security, but when it comes right down to it, he makes these decisions because he’s the president and he’s in charge.

So a leak is unauthorized release of information. And if it were authorized, who would be giving the authorization? The president. How, then, can the president “leak” information? He can’t. He authorizes, he declassifies. He decides the information that needed to be kept quiet yesterday needs to be released today.

He can do this? Yes. He can. He’s the president. It’s his call, so the storyline that he somehow leaked information is absurd by definition. The better question is why he decided to release information he had heretofore wanted kept under wraps.

And that brings us back to Joe Wilson. Now Joe needs our understanding, seeing as how he went on a mission for which he was not qualified. Without his CIA-employed wife pulling strings, Joe would not have been sent to Niger to find out if Saddam Hussein had tried to get yellowcake uranium there. Some Democratic partisan with some actual experience in such missions, perhaps, but not Joe. So you can understand why, when he returned, he gave no written report, but said in an oral report that the possibility of the Saddam/yellowcake connection could certainly not be discounted. Then – confused man that he was – he wrote in the New York Times that Saddam certainly could not have tried to get yellowcake from Niger, and forgot to mention that he had said the opposite in his oral report!

It’s tough being an amateur spy. Apparently the missus didn’t give him many tips before he left. One that might have been helpful, for instance, is the part about how you don’t go on a mission to gather classified information, then put the information in the New York Times.

But Joe is new at this. Dick Cheney isn’t. And when Cheney became aware of the fact that Wilson had said one thing in his oral report – the contents of which were classified – and another in his Times piece, he faced a quandary. The press was going nuts. The Democrats were accusing Bush of lying. The Kerry campaign was making Wilson its star-of-the-week. And it was all based on a published op-ed that could easily be refuted by information the administration held in its hands, but had classified as unable to be released.

So Cheney goes to Bush. Which is the bigger problem? Keep the information under wraps and let a disingenuous claim erode support for the war effort? Or release it and give up whatever benefit was gained by keeping it quiet?

Bush makes the call. Put out what you have to put out to minimize the damage that was being caused by Wilson’s hit piece. It was clearly becoming a bigger problem than could possibly be caused by the information’s release.

It’s a funny thing, information in Washington. There is lots of information that is both accurate and important, and no one is ever allowed to hear it because of sensitivity related to national security. Then there is lots of the opposite kind of information. You might call it misleading. You might call it just plain made up. It comes from folks like Joe Wilson, with victim complexes and axes to grind – all of which serves as a nifty alternative to actual credibility.

Joe Wilson uses his wife to get a foreign intelligence assignment, botches it, blows his own cover and misleads the entire country with an article that never should have been written. The president of the United States decides to refute all this with the truth.

Over this, headlines scream, “Bush authorized leaks!” Authorizing the unauthorized. Interesting concept, that. It can’t be easy thinking up new scandals.

This is Column # DC28. Request permission to publish here.