... The president's defenders are now working overtime to redefine the meaning of ``leak,'' saying the president has the right to declassify documents. He may well have that authority. But his appointed leaker, former Cheney adviser I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby Jr., peddled the intelligence information to reporters 10 days before Bush declassified it. If that's not a leak of classified information, we don't know what is.
What's more, Fitzgerald's revelations are exposing the hypocrisy of an administration that's now claiming that there are good leaks and bad leaks. You guessed right: The former are those that burnish the president's image, while the latter are those that embarrass or threaten him.
Bush has ordered inquiries into leaks to the New York Times of a warrantless-surveillance program and to the Washington Post of the existence of secret CIA camps overseas where prisoners are tortured or sent to other countries for torture. Bush has claimed, without providing a shred of evidence, that the surveillance leak has damaged America's war on terror. And his administration says the disclosure of the secret camps hurt America's image abroad. (No acknowledgment there that maybe torture itself is damaging America's reputation.) ...
Of course, Washington leaks are as old as the republic. And these three leaks do have something in common: They highlight the refusal of Republican congressional leaders to authorize long-overdue investigations into the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, the secret CIA camps and the domestic-surveillance program. Maybe those will be tasks for a future Congress.
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/editorial/14325368.htm
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