From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"George J. Sherwood"  wrote in
message news:443686f4{at}w3....
> Rich Gauszka wrote:
>
>>
>> My question is,  if the leak was real and not against the law why didn't
>> Bush just say so?
>>
>> Something ain't right
>
> First of all the leak hasn't been proved real. If the two above conditions
> are met, I surely don't know why.  Most likely if President Bush had come
> out and said, I authorized the release of Valie Plame's connection with
> the
> CIA, because she wasn't a covert officer under the statute and the
> information was relative to the case her husband, Joe Wilson was making in
> his OpEd, I would bet the headline would read, "Bush authorizes release of
> name of covert CIA Officer."  This is just like today's headlines that
> read, "Bush authorized leak".  And then the first paragraph
connects it
> with Valarie Plame.  Barely noted in the artciles is the fact that he
> legally authorized release of declassified information and that
> information
> had nothing to do with the release of Plame's name.
>
>
> George

That's why I said 'if'.

As to covert status Fitzgerald found it did meet the statute ( 5 years,
specific efforts to conceal, overseas travel )

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11179719/site/newsweek/


That said,  I do think they just were attempting to nullify Wilson and
didn't fully realize the ramifications when dealing with classified
material.

From my service time, I do remember published pictures of LBJ holding
documents on the White House lawn that made us all cringe

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