The current Exec. Order simply does not recognize the concept of selective or limited declassification. By the terms of the order itself any information that remains subject to protections against unauthorized disclosure is “classified information.†The president (and other officials authorized to declassify) do indeed possess the power to authorize limited or restricted disclosure, but the means for doing this is not declassification but rather the provision of clearance to specified individuals. Well, you might ask, didn’t Bush then simply authorize Libby to grant Judy Miller (or any other journalist to whom Libby leaked) a clearance with respect to the classified information? Apparently not, because such a clearance would have subjected the journalist to a non-disclosure obligation – a result contrary to LIbby’s testimony that the purpose of the authorization from Bush was to get information in the NIE into the media for public dissemination of information that might undermine Joe Wilson’s credibility.

Why didn’t Bush simply declassify the information? That would have been a transparent attempt on the part of the Administration to attack Wilson. It was essential that the information be leaked, i.e., disclosed to the journalist with the understanding that the information was not for attribution. In that way the Administration could not be accused of engaging in a political attack on Wilson, and the journalist, though aware that the Administration was indeed engaging in such an attack, would be bound to protect the identity of her source and therebyunable to report that such attack was taking place.

In sum, Bush did not declassify because that could be traced to the Administration and certainly would have been perceived as an attack on Wilson. And Bush couldn’t simply grant a clearance to the journalist because that similarly would have defeated the purpose of dessimination by subjecting the jouranlist to a non-disclosure obligation. Quite simply, Bush neither declassified nor granted clearance, and thereby achieved an objective that the law plainly does not permit – the selective disclosure of classified information to parties that are not themselves bound not to disclose.

This is illegal, my friends.

If Bush was involved in leaking portions of the NIE to discredit Joe Wilson, then it is inescapable that he was involved in leaking Val Plame’s identity to discredit Joe Wilson. It’s phase two of the same vindictive project.

He didn’t suddenly go Alzheimer’s on the matter after phase one, and he certainly knows who the leaker is: he sees the guy every morning while shaving.

This makes Clinton’s lie about “having sex with that woman” seem completely trivial by comparison.

Maybe Bush will fire himself, now that’s he found out who dun it.

The act of declassification involves, at least in the procedure you mention, that the head of the agency that classified the report, in this case the CIA, would be involved in the decision to declassify it. If that’s true, how could they have used the procedure you cite and just keep it among the three of them?

Second, I think that it’s at least possible, assuming the President actually has the authority to unilaterally declassify parts of a document, that it can be done without alerting anyone. This would require that the White House have control of all copies of the document, so they could be altered without others knowing. Certainly not standard procedure, but if they possess the only copies, this would be possible, since it’s their classification database they’d be altering (unless something’s changed about that procedure that I’m not aware of, which I’ll admit it quite possible). If other copies of the document existed, either at some congressional site or at the CIA, then this isn’t possible. All the documents would have to be collected and revised, and the databases in question updated.