EW, I took the time to read the whole EO and the set of changes earlier, and I came to the same conclusion. Since then, and in light of all the commentary I’ve read in the meantime, I’ve assumed I read it wrong. Good to know my comprehension isn’t a flawed as I thought. This is a very important point and we have to spread the truth far and wide. You’re right–there’s no reason to take Cheney’s word for anything.

EW – SOOOOO lucid! A real pleasure, and thank you for seeing past the sideshow to laser in on Bush’s role, or lack of a role in the Plame leak (although I do believe that he put out the hit on Valerie, it would be the kind of vindictive thing that Cheney in all his manipulative glory would know that Bush would relish doing). Please continue to hammer on the â€waving of the wandâ€, as Mrs. Carville describes it. While it is clear that Bush does have the power to declassify at will, â€at will†does not mean that the document is declassified the minute the thought pops into Bush’s head, like some kind of impulse that he would like to have some popcorn. To make this kind of argument is to condone as well that he can RETROACTIVELY (hint, hint!) declassify something – the President is required to go through the declassification procedure set out in statute, regulation, or un-amended Executive Order, just like everyone else, except that the decision itself to declassify cannot be questioned, no matter how stupid or ill-advised.

Mornin’ EW.
Notwithstanding all the other weasling and wiggling the right has done to exonerate and rehabilitate Libby for his role in Plamegate, isn’t it true that no one has suggested there was no crime ’cause Deadeye had instadeclassification powers? In fact, if they were to propose that there could have been no crime for that reason, the whole problem would go away. Rather, from Bush on down, all these weasels know that the power to declassify is a separate issue from outing a spy, and to claim that Valerie’s outing wasn’t an outing ’cause Bush or Cheney declassified it would be to admit that they were in full knowledge of her status when they outed her, which would be an admission of guilt under the statute, and convictions would be, to borrow a phrase from George Tenet (who seems to have remained miraculously clean through it all), a slam dunk. No? Or, yes?

i wondered about this myself, but just assumed rich had discovered something i had not heard before.

man, what an error. it tacitly legalizes cheney’s unmasking of plame.

i even opined to my wife this morning that this was the first of rich columns’ i’d read in a while that contributed much to my understanding of anything.

guess i’ll have that to clear up now too.

I read Rich’s column closely, and I just assumed that he got it right. Even a quick read of the language of the Executive Order makes it clear that EW is right. This is a demonstration of the power of the MSM, when we have a columnist whose views we generally support, we assume they are right. So do the people on the right.

â€Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty†needs a lemma: A good memory is the down-payment on the price of liberty.

masaccio

Nice point–let’s go with it and on that basis indict him for declassifying Plame’s identity!!

Well, I didn’t say that last point correctly. In order for the president to give authority to Cheney, the president himself would have to be an â€agencyâ€, within the meaning of the EO. Cheney would have to be an â€officialâ€. I don’t think this is consistent with their theory explaining why Cheney doesn’t have to comply with the rules on classification.

How many times and in how many ways are we going to whip this dead horse?

Fascination with Cheney is a disaster–unavoidable, certainly, but a disaster all the same. And why? Because we cannot also attend to Bush while attending to Cheney–or I, at least, have enormous trouble doing so. This situation is certainly well known to Cheney as well as Bush: Cheney may indeed wish (and largely manage) to maneuver in secrecy, but it’s always to HIS secrecy that his antics draw our attention. And this only increases his value to Bush.

The correlative problem? We really don’t know how to attend to Bush. His incompetence, his ignorance, his passivity, the deranging clumsiness and poverty of his discourse, all make him quite impossible to watch–it’s like watching paint dry.

Too bad for us, because, finally, it’s all about Bush. And I think he’s finally quite legible in a disgusting sort of way. To begin with–and also to end with–the man is a vindictive and punitive sadist who needs to hurt individual human beings, then to sit back and watch the damage being done. The particular instance of the Plame case is a perfect example: isn’t it obvious that it was Bush–not Cheney, who couldn’t care less, but Bush–who wanted to hurt the Wilsons, and hurt them in ways that would cause them real personal damage, destroying their careers to begin with? (Cheney’s gratification comes, first, foremost and always, from scoring points with the boss.)

Bush did that thing to Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. He had to do that thing because he had nothing better to do–by which I do not mean that there was no better thing to do, but, rather, that doing this thing was, for Bush, the one and only satisfying thing to do–on a purely personal level.

To take ths point a step further: so utterly lacking is Bush in any abstract or conceptual skill, any curiosity, compassion or imagination, that the only remaining stimulus of any kind available to him is the most trivial, the basest, the most concrete, and the most vile activity at hand: and it always, without exception, a matter of hurting people, and of watching them suffer from his handiwork.

The better to sharpen our skills at watching this (unwatchable) thing, we might start–because it keeps us on a level pertaining to the man–by taking careful note of his interactions with the casualties in our armed forces, and with the family members of the casualties most of all–more specifically their parents, and more specifically still, their mothers. For this is the Great Asshole’s shining moment–his moment for shedding tears about the terrible hardships of being George W. Bush.

Where the hell is Mencken when we need him? And where the hell is Mark Twain?

I wonder if you have comments on Noman Pearlstine’s session on C-Span’s Book TV today including the debate with Bob Woodward?

oops; just saw stev888’s note on pearlstine’s session, sorry for the redundancy.

also sorry i missed the woodward debate!

â€and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;â€

Certainly,divulging and directing, the release of classified information; such as the name or occupation of a covert CIA officer, does not fall into a category of â€executive dutiesâ€, no matter how you twist it around and no matter who you are.

I remember figuring this out some months ago, during a discussion at Firedoglake. The only person who has the universal power to declassify documents is the President, even according to EO 13292.

So, yes, it’s true, and Rich should know better. Unfortunately, I also remember glancing at that order and at first thinking that he _did_ have the power to declassify anything, since he had been given the power to classify. Apparently, this is a mistake many people make.

jodi (@ 15:01):

When the last Cheney is strangled with the intestines of the last Bush (to borrow a famous phrase of Diderot’s)….

As was said in that previous thread, Cheney has been very, very careful — Cheneyesque fashion — to ensure that he’s not saying something that’s an explicit lie, but overstates the case.

EW

This is a crucial, but subtle distinction.

I have a confession to make. I have been guilty of the error of thinking Cheney could declassify under theprovision that he was a â€supervisor†of others with classification authority and thusly could declassify all but that for which the President was the orginal classifier.

I am a dolt! Cheney may be a de facto supervisor of the cabinet officals, but I don’t think ANYONE has established that he is a legal supervisor of them.

Hence, I revise my opinion and now agree with you that Cheney can only declassify things for which he was the original classifier absent specific delagation from the President.

In an attempt to redeem myself, I offer this anomaly:

If Cheney has orginal classification authority as laid out in this EO, how come he has beenn using the just made up in his own fertile imagination designation â€Treat as Classifiedâ€????

There has to be a reason for that. I don’t think that the mere fact that a given document does not fit the ctiteria for classification would cause him to hesitate, so there has to be some other reason why he is using the non-legal designation.

BTW, to any current or former feds out there who have been hesitant about going public with info contain on a â€treat as classified†document—I can’t think of what the crime might be if you decided to talk about it.

Treated as classified. Hmm. Was there any marking to that effect on the memo sent to Air Force One on the way to Africa, the one where Valerie is named in a paragraph marked S for secret?

So was the 2003 EO an expansion of power Cheney had previously not exercised OR was it cover Cheney’s pre 2003 activities OR was it to limit Cheney’s pre2003 activities?

â€Cheney can only declassify things for which he was the original classifier absent specific delagation from the President.â€

That’s a problem for Cheney if you assume Cheney doesn’t already think he is the original classifier. Wouldn’t it be just like Cheney to argue his handling of the intelligence portfolio for Bush in 2001 carried with it an implied deligation of Bush’s authority to classify materials as he would have done so with or without Bush’s verbal approval.

When did Cheney begin using the â€treat as classified†designation and Why? Maybe 2001 when Bush handed the intell portfolio to Cheney. Isn’t it likely that Cheney handling intell would want to use Bush’s authority to classify and declassify? Just because he didnt’ have that authoirty doesn’t mean he didn’t try to do just that from 2001 to 2003.

If so, the â€treated as†designation was likely born out of another one of Addinton’s theories implied co-extensive powers. It may have went something like this – since Bush delegated handling the intell portfolio to Cheney, Bush also implictily delegated his classification auhority to Cheney as well. So without an express delegation, Cheney/Addington decided to use the â€treated as†designation to escape liability for violating the pre-2003 EO and to prevent any backlash caused by Cheney becoming the intelligence decider

That may also explain why they’ve continued to use it after 2003? Makes sense if you don’t want to admit the pre 2003 designation lacked any real authority under the pre-2003 EO. And if you continue to use it you don’t have to explain why you dropped it or why you used it to begin with. Have they ever explained what authority â€treated as†has or why it was adopted?

Who wrote the 2003 EO may explain why it was written.

Did Addington/Cheney write the EO? If so, was it really an expansion of VP’s power? Perhaps, if you assume Cheney hadn’t exercised such power before 2003. If Cheney had done so, is it likely the EO was an attempt to get Bush to retroactively clear Cheney of improperly classifying materials from 2001 to 2003 in violation of the Pre-2003 EO?

Did someone else write the EO?
If so, would someone outside the VP’s office write it for the purpose of expanding the VP’s power? It’s doubtful anyone outside the VP’s office would help the VP gain more power considering the VP was already the dominant force in the White House.

So was someone outside the VP’s office trying to stop Cheney’s 2001-2003 activities? If so, the EO would apprear to be an expansion of power but in practice would limit the VP’s exercise of his implied powers based on his pre-2003 EO interpretations.