Not-New Revelations

The latest in the Plame affair announced today with grand headlines (“Libby says Bush Authorized Leaks”) give the appearance of being not only new but meaningful. Any reading, close or otherwise, however reveals that they are really neither:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

Journalist-blogger Tom Maguire (who is the one-stop-shop for this stuff from the Right-worldview) at JustOneMinute has not one, but two posts on the subject since late yesterday. He makes the obvious points in the first:

However, as Mr. Gerstein noted, and as the excerpt printed by Mr. Sullivan makes clear, we *don't know* what Cheney and Bush discussed before Bush authorized the partial disclosure of the NIE. President Bush may have been vitally interested specifically in discrediting Joe Wilson; he may not have heard the name, and simply authorized the disclosure to help with the White House side of the press coverage. That said, Bush's involvement preceded the July 8 meeting with Judy Miller, (p. 19/20 of .pdf), which is not great news.

So, was "Bush Nailed" for helping with a White House PR pushback?

As I’ve noted before, politics is a contact sport and is it truly unreasonable to think that the President would authorize and/or aid an effort to push-back against what was believed then and proven afterwards to be a fabricated argument on the part of Joe Wilson? Most critics of the Administration on this issue are forced to assign motive to the WH actions because, as Maguire makes clear, we don’t know at this point what Cheney, Bush, Rove or any others thought at the time.

This last point is taken up in Maguire’s post from this morning:

Architects sometimes refer to "negative space" as important in creating a desired effect - an area devoid of architectural details can enhance a larger effect.

Or amongst fans of detective fiction, there is the famous incident of the non-barking dog in the night-time - it was what did *not* happen that was important.

Today there is good blogospheric buzz about a new filing (39 page .pdf) by Special Counsel Fitzgerald in the Plame investigation. There is an overheated reaction to the news of President Bush's involvement, but for our current purposes it is what Fitzgerald does not say that is interesting.

Here is the passage on Bush that prompted such excitement:

"Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote.

Mr. Libby is said to have testified that "at first" he rebuffed Mr. Cheney's suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. "Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE," the prosecution filing said.

Nothing illegal or untoward is alleged. Fitzgerald did talk to Bush and Cheney together, and if he had a different story from them, this would have been the time to note it.

I leave you, again through the magic of the internet, with Sim’s thoughts on this newest ‘revelation’:

The leak of Plame's name was ILLEGAL. But today's news does nothing to shed light on that subject. It only deals with the NIE…and is thus not new(s).