In case you missed this article last week, NRO's Byron York caught the real news made by Dick Cheney during his soft-ball interview with his friend Brit Hume at Fox News:
The Little-Noticed Order That Gave Dick Cheney New Power Have you ever heard of Executive Order 13292?
In addition to discussing his hunting accident, Vice President Dick Cheney, in his interview on the Fox News Channel Wednesday, also pointed to a little-known but enormously consequential expansion of vice-presidential power that has come about as a result of the Bush administration's war on terror. ...
...Near the end of the interview, Fox anchor Brit Hume brought up a controversy arising from the CIA-leak case, in which prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court papers that former top Cheney aide Lewis Libby testified he had been authorized "by his superiors" to disclose information about the classified National Intelligence Estimate to members of the press. "Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?" Hume asked.
"There is an executive order to that effect," Cheney said. ...
...Cheney was referring to Executive Order 13292, issued by President Bush on March 25, 2003, which dealt with the handling of classified material. That order was not an entirely new document but was, instead, an amendment to an earlier Executive Order, number 12958, issued by President Bill Clinton on April 17, 1995.
At the time, Bush's order received very little coverage in the press. What mention there was focused on the order's provisions making it easier for the government to keep classified documents under wraps. But as Cheney pointed out Wednesday, the Bush order also contained a number of provisions which significantly increased the vice president's power.
Throughout Executive Order 13292, there are changes to the original Clinton order which, in effect, give the vice president the power of the president in dealing with classified material. ...
Read the entire article to see the actual substantive changes President Bush made to a 1995 Clinton executive order which, in the Clinton era, limited declassification authority to the president, but that under Bush, gave those powers to the vice president as well, an unprecedented move that in effect, changes the Constitution, which in its text gives the vice president no real power at all. I'll reprint just one of them, one directly relevant to the CIA leak case, here:
In another part of the original Clinton order, there was a segment dealing with who was authorized to delegate the authority to classify material. In the Clinton order, the passage read:
(2) "Top Secret" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President or by an agency head or official designated... (3) "Secret" or "Confidential" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; an agency head or official designated...
In the Bush order, that segment was changed to read (emphasis added):
(2) "Top Secret" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President; or an agency head or official designated... (3) "Secret" or "Confidential" original classification authority may be delegated only by the President; in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President; or an agency head or official designated...
And what was Ms. Plame's covert position within the CIA classified as? SNF -- "Secret, no foreign," meaning top secret information not to be shared even with friendly governments. (Valerie Plame was reportedly working on WMD proliferation issues related to Iran...). If Cheney unilaterally declassified that information, along with any other information he believed would undermine Joe Wilson and undercut others challenging the rationale for invading Iraq, he can not claim to have done so legally, under the cover of executive order 13292. Game, set, match, unless Pat Fitzgerald has some other trick up his sleeve.
Cheney isn't just a theoretically powerful veep, York concludes -- President Bush has taken steps to give him real, concrete, unprecedented, and clearly, because of his unique relationship with the president, largely unchecked -- power.
And in dropping that little bomblet on Fox, Cheney not only made that point, he also laid the groundwork for a defense for Scooter Libby, and for himself.
And by the way, Bush issued that executive order on March 25, 2003. Joe Wilson's article, which started the ball rolling on the outing of his wife's secret identity, was published on July 6th. (He had actually been a regular cable news commentor on the possible invasion since the previous year.) But that wasn't the first time his criticisms of the case for war would have come to the attention of the Bush administration. Wilson was first quoted in the Nation Magazine saying that with regard to Iraq, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness," months earlier -- on March 6th. On March 8th, According to a letter Wilson wrote to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence:
-- On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report (pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that "in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue." That update from the CIA "also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5." The report then states the "DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue." The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report and the Vice President let the matter drop.
Yet, on March 16th, Vice President Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press," again making the case for invading Iraq and famously boasting that the U.S. would be "greeted as liberators" by the conquered Iraqis.
Kind of puts that executive order issuance date in a whole new light, doesn't it?
An excellent history of the lame affair can be found here, from John Dean writing for FindLaw...
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
