Oct. 7, 2003: “I’ve constantly expressed my displeasure with leaks, particularly leaks of classified information.”

Sept. 30, 2003: “There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. …” ~ABC News, quoting George W. Bush

Fellow blogger Chris Roach makes the valid point that what Mr. Bush did was in all likelihood legal and was not exactly a “leak” in the usual sense, because it received authorisation from the top. Yes, the President has the authority to declassify documents. But I would be interested in hearing which previous administrations declassified something and then shuffled it on over to a newspaper to use that newspaper as a front in its propaganda to start a war. Put that way, it doesn’t sound so innocuous.

I’d like to hear from defenders of the President if they think it is desirable that the executive uses his power to declassify sensitive information to manipulate domestic press coverage of a question of national security, and I think we’d all like to know just what sensitive information Mr. Bush authorised his underlings to relay to The New York Times. It would be especially interesting to know if the information in question was even confirmed or verified, or if it was another one of the single-sourced, shoddy pieces of intel that the administration and the press routinely treated as “fact” before the invasion of Iraq. If declassifying this information was unobjectionable and perfectly above board, why not use it publicly and directly themselves in the debate about whether to invade? Why slip it to the “paper of record” instead, unless it was aimed at pushing shoddy or false information into the public debate through an ostensibly reputable news source (remember that this was the era at the Times of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, Friend of Chalabi)? Maybe I’m too cynical about this crowd, but after everything we have seen from them who wouldn’t be cynical?