Neil @ 83

emptywheel @ 56
Tithonia @ 41
sonate @ 35
Troll alert at circa 29, 30.

I kinda thought 29 was rugby lingo?

Yes, one scores a try (kind of like the touchdown), then one kicks a conversation (kind of like the extra point).

It may be a good thing to have a troll in the scrum.

I resemble that remark. I thought extra points in Rugby, like Cardinal Newman, were converted.

Yes, they are converted. And if there were Trolls in scrums they’d be props; and perhaps a tall Hobbit would make a good hooker, with those big feet.

Somewhere upthread, I read that someone noted that Cheney et al had a private, on background, network of communication. Perhaps there is a private e-mail or extra-net out there so that everyone can maintain that precious plausible deniability.

dreamcatcher @
152
There are actually two levels of classification involved here, and Marcy’s use of the strikeout is both apt and telling. On the one level is whether Cheney had authority to declassify the NIE, which is a document, and on the other level whether had the authority to declassify the status of a CIA operative, which is not a document, but a operative status.

So even if, and this is a big if, Cheney had a right (delegated to him by Bush) to declassify the NIE, that may not mean that it automatically declassifies all the information imbedded in the NIE, which in this case includes that fact that Plame was a CIA operative (the term implies a classified status).

So we ought to be careful here. Even if Cheney had the right to declassify the NIE it did not necessarily give him the right to declassify Plame’s status.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

dreamcatcher – You’ve conflated the NIE and Plame’s CIA affiliation, as I noticed happened with a comment or two without correction in EW’s DKos diary about this as well.

The 2002 NIE (which Libby leaked cherry-picked portions of to various reporters) nowhere mentions Valerie Plame or her CIA affiliation (as far as we know from the public record). When EW is referring to Plame’s status side by side with the NIE, it is not because the NIE is/was a source of information about Plame. EW’s strikeout replacement wording is instead used because EW is convinced that the “NIE”-declassification-authorization tale is a cover story for what really transpired between Cheney and Libby (and maybe Bush) with regard to Valerie Plame [who they learned about from non-NIE source(s)] and their plot to out her or to cover their tracks after the fact when the criminal investigation threatened them with exposure.

Other than that confusion, though, I think you and others make a good point about the qualitative difference between declassifying classified documents and “declassifying” a covert CIA officer’s identity and her secret network – “apples and oranges” as commenters leveymg & TravelerDiogenes portray it in the DKos diary (if only because of the IIPA statute). And I sincerely doubt that Mr. Bush copped to the latter “declassification” to Special Counsel Fitzgerald…

mbbsdphil @
159

bmaz@155, I agree. These seemingly innocuous few words may have great implications. It matches the surreptitious, legalistic way Addington, Libby and Cheney operate. See, their signing statements. It matches the gaping hole in Bush’s executive competence – his inability to use data other than body language, his poor attention span, and his consequent dismissal of data he has to acquire through reading or understanding complex systems.

The public language regarding Cheney’s authority to classify matches an unrevealed authority to perform executive duties. That leads to his practice of classifying and his willful failure to report his classification practices.

Cheney, Libby and Addington are voracious but careful men. They would have put in place a secret framework of power that would excuse their exercise of it.

mbbsdphil & bmaz – I do wonder whether you are both on to something potentially (and ominously) significant here…

Another lightbulb is turned on. Thanks

As Ew indicated Waxman/All Please read the Libby transcripts.

When Fitz ended his press conference stating that if new information came forward that the investigation could be opened once again. He said this after he offered congress the records/transcripts of the trial. Just what did he mean? Would it be congress offering more info? Who?

Although some have doubted the veracity of his sources Jason Leopold reported that Joseph Wilson first come onto Cheney’s radar as a result of an CNN appearance in early March

Even though John Dean has yet to find it, EO 13292 expanding declassification authority to the VP on March 25th is real. Meanwhile David Sanger at NYT has reported that – even with that EO in his pocket – it was Bush who authorized release of the NIE to rebut Wilson long before his OP-ed.

Vyan

Vyan

The amended EO is the one Leonard was speaking to.

And Wilson may have been on Bush’s radar, but remember that they were using his report to justify the war in March. That’s going to govern how they’ll refer to him.

ANd as to the Sanger article, you might think about how honest teh article is since Sanger is one of the people who receioved the NIE leak before Cheney and Bush asserted that it was declassified. THere is info in there we know to be wrong.

Ann in AZ @
139

Marcy, I thought at one time I read that Executive Order 12958 had been amended, so I have just spent some time looking up that amendment. Executive Order 12958 was amended on March 25, 2003, by Executive Order 13292, to read as follows:
(snip)
Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority.

(a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:
(1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;

I was wondering how this amendment of the original order affects your theory? You can read it in the following link.

Very interesting! So, what was happening on or about March 25, 2003 that this would come up at that particular moment in time?

Although some have doubted the veracity of his sources Jason Leopold reported that Joseph Wilson first come onto Cheney’s radar as a result of an CNN appearance in early March

Even though John Dean has yet to find it, EO 13292 expanding declassification authority to the VP on March 25th is real. Meanwhile David Sanger at NYT has reported that – even with that EO in his pocket – it was Bush who authorized release of the NIE to rebut Wilson long before his OP-ed.

Vyan

There are actually two levels of classification involved here, and Marcy’s use of the strikeout is both apt and telling. On the one level is whether Cheney had authority to declassify the NIE, which is a document, and on the other level whether had the authority to declassify the status of a CIA operative, which is not a document, but a operative status.

So even if, and this is a big if, Cheney had a right (delegated to him by Bush) to declassify the NIE, that may not mean that it automatically declassifies all the information imbedded in the NIE, which in this case includes that fact that Plame was a CIA operative (the term implies a classified status).

So we ought to be careful here. Even if Cheney had the right to declassify the NIE it did not necessarily give him the right to declassify Plame’s status.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?

dreamcatcher – You’ve conflated the NIE and Plame’s CIA affiliation, as I noticed happened with a comment or two without correction in EW’s DKos diary about this as well.

The 2002 NIE (which Libby leaked cherry-picked portions of to various reporters) nowhere mentions Valerie Plame or her CIA affiliation (as far as we know from the public record). When EW is referring to Plame’s status side by side with the NIE, it is not because the NIE is/was a source of information about Plame. EW’s strikeout replacement wording is instead used because EW is convinced that the “NIE”-declassification-authorization tale is a cover story for what really transpired between Cheney and Libby (and maybe Bush) with regard to Valerie Plame [who they learned about from non-NIE source(s)] and their plot to out her or to cover their tracks after the fact when the criminal investigation threatened them with exposure.

Other than that confusion, though, I think you and others make a good point about the qualitative difference between declassifying classified documents and “declassifying” a covert CIA officer’s identity and her secret network – “apples and oranges” as commenters leveymg & TravelerDiogenes portray it in the DKos diary (if only because of the IIPA statute). And I sincerely doubt that Mr. Bush copped to the latter “declassification” to Special Counsel Fitzgerald…

mbbsdphil @
159

bmaz@155, I agree. These seemingly innocuous few words may have great implications. It matches the surreptitious, legalistic way Addington, Libby and Cheney operate. See, their signing statements. It matches the gaping hole in Bush’s executive competence – his inability to use data other than body language, his poor attention span, and his consequent dismissal of data he has to acquire through reading or understanding complex systems.

The public language regarding Cheney’s authority to classify matches an unrevealed authority to perform executive duties. That leads to his practice of classifying and his willful failure to report his classification practices.

Cheney, Libby and Addington are voracious but careful men. They would have put in place a secret framework of power that would excuse their exercise of it.

mbbsdphil & bmaz – I do wonder whether you are both on to something potentially (and ominously) significant here…

Did Shooter speak of Valerie Plame?
Why, no, he didn’t know her name!

Did Ari out her on the plane?
Did Armi tell Woodward in the rain?

Did Scooter to Dame Judy speak–
O’er buttered toast–an awesome leak?

Did Dick declassify it on the spot?
He did, tho’ the law said he could not!

Orange jumpsuits in the sun,
Oh, when will we see justice done?

love your verses and handle….

Did Ari out her on the plane?
Did Armi tell Woodward in the rain?

Did Scooter to Dame Judy speak–
O’er buttered toast–an awesome leak?

Did Dick declassify it on the spot?
He did, tho’ the law said he could not!

Orange jumpsuits in the sun,
Oh, when will we see justice done?