Does Cheney REALLY have the power to declassify an agents’ identity? And where’s the documentation?

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This past week saw the start of the trial phase of “Scooter” Libby’s perjury & obstruction of justice investigation. In fact, the trial started on the day of President Bush’s State of the Union Address. If the timing was a little awkward for President Bush, the press definitely gave the Commander-in-Chief a pass by not bringing the subject up that evening.

I’ll spare you the details, assuming that if you are reading this blog, you already know the back-story behind this crime. As reported here several times in the past, Cheney has implied that he is the person that declassified Ms. Plame’s identity and ordered Libby to reveal that fact to the press. But there is a bigger question that I’m still not hearing anyone in the media ask: Does Cheney REALLY have the power to declassify an agents’ identity? And if so, shouldn’t there be a dated documented record of that declassification? Cheney has made the dubious claim that the power is afforded him in the Constitution (don’t you just love how this Administration hides behind the Constitution when defending their crimes, and then dismisses it when it forbids them from engaging in others?), And in so revealing, put at risk not only every person that has ever done business or consorted with Ms. Plame in the past, but any other agent that also claimed to have worked for the same CIA “front” cover organization as her… a fictitious company called “Brewster/Jennings”. The damage done by Cheney’s zeal to discredit Joe Wilson is immeasurable. Oddly, the fact that Cheney is asserting a power that he probably doesn’t even have, hasn’t made much sway in the mainstream press. An investigation by the LA Times yesterday/Sunday (registration required) reveals that former CIA official Robert Grenier is the likely source that told Libby, who then told Cheney, that Wilson’s wife worked with him at the CIA. Since Libby had the proper security clearance, that was nothing illegal in Grenier’s revelation. And if the VP does indeed have the power he claims, then the subsequent release of that information to the press would likewise not be illegal (but note this this does NOTHING to affect the perjury & obstruction charges against Libby). But even if the VP *does* have the power he claims, this was certainly an abuse of that power which both endangered lives and cost the U.S. significant counter-terrorism intelligence assets around the world at a time when we so desperately need them.

The story broke this way: Ms. Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, exposed the Bush Administrations lies about Iraq seeking Uranium from Niger, and how they used those lies to justify the preemptive invasion of that country, Cheney went on the warpath, seeking to “discredit” the former ambassador.

Here are Cheney’s now-famous notes scrawled atop Wilson’s article in the New York Times:

(Click to enlarge)

Even enlarged, the VP’s handwriting is a tad difficult to read. It says:

“Have they done this sort of thing before?
Send our Amb[assador] to answer a question?
Do we ordinarily send people out
pro bono to work for us?

Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Okay, ignoring the stupidity of anyone thinking of Nigeria as a good place for a “junket“, it stuck me right away that even at that early point, Cheney ALREADY knew the significance of Ambassador Wilson’s wife. Not, “Why did the CIA send him”, but rather “Did his WIFE send him”. Assuming Cheney didn’t already know who Plame-Wilson was at the time he read the story, he would of had to of declassified her identity in the time between when he wrote those words and when Libby first started phoning reporters around town looking for one that would print the sensitive material (Libby spoke to at least five reporters before partisan hack Robert Novak took the bait). That leaves a very small window of time for any declassification to take place, and one should wonder how much of a review on the impact such a revelation could possibly have taken place in such a short period of time. If there currently is no such procedure, there needs to be.

The suggestion in the LA Times story is that Cheney started asking around about Wilson, and Grenier told Libby who told Cheney. Maybe that’s how it went down, maybe not. It is doubtful we’ll ever know for sure. But remember, NONE OF THIS CHANGES THE CASE AGAINST LIBBY. He willfully obstructed justice and tried to mislead the investigation. Why would he do that if they truly believed they had done nothing wrong? OF COURSE they knew what they were doing was wrong. There’d be no point in their going to such lengths to hide the truth if they truly believed otherwise.

Former President Bush described spy-name-leakers as “the most insidious of traitors“.

I’m confident Vice President Cheney was so hellbent on finding a way to discredit Wilson, he didn’t consider… or in my opinion probably even care… about the consequences of outing an undercover CIA agent. EVEN IF you believe, that as Vice President he does indeed have the power to declassify something like the identity of an undercover CIA agent, the consequences should have prevented him from doing so. The fact that the Vice President went on a crusade to discredit a critic that exposed his administrations lies, should raise some serious questions that I just don’t hear anyone asking.

This entry was posted on January 29, 2007 at 1:40 am and is filed under Political News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.