Cain't Truss 'Em

Digby makes some important points (but since when is that any different?). Essentially what we can't take away from this suggestion by Scooter Libby that Bush authorized him to leak classified information is that the White House, and more to the point this President, will use information for political purposes. They will use it to discredit their detractors and bolster their policy goals. Their is no ethical filter for when and where and how they will use information. The ends justify the means.

Presidents can technically declassify whatever information they wish for "the good of the country," but typically that happens with a CIA document dump. It doesn't take the form of telling the VP's chief of staff to pull selected quotes out of an NIE and give them to the New York Times. At least not usually. And what's crucial about this is credibility. If the President is leaking information solely to make himself look good and to make his opponents look bad, his credibility on all related issues takes a hit. Taking Bush's side on the NSA wiretapping scandal demands that you trust that he is only using the program in the limited capacity he describes. Taking his side on prewar intelligence demands that you trust he did not pick and choose what intelligence to share with the public, and that he did not base his decisions on preconceived notions and sought needles supporting his beliefs in haystacks full of contradictory intel. This Potemkin village is coming crashing to the surface. Already today the NSA scandal has widened:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today left open the possibility that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States, dramatically expanding the potential reach of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program.

In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said the government would have to determine if a conversation was related to al-Qaeda and crucial to fighting terrorism before deciding whether to listen in without court supervision.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said, referring to the possibility of monitoring purely domestic communications.

This already contradicts what Abu Gonzales has said in the past, that the calls monitored are purely international. He's clearly giving himself an out. Maybe new information is about to come to light. Gonzales also hinted about a second, expanded version of the NSA program that may have been going on simultaneously. He did the same thing in Senate hearings a month ago. We don't know what the NSA has been monitoring, but you can be sure that what we know now is the LEAST, not the most, of what they've been doing.

The point is that the American people cannot take this President at his word. Once you lose that credibility it's nearly impossible to get back. You MUST suspect that the President might be using the NSA program to spy on political enemies. You MUST suspect that intelligence supporting prewar claims was cooked in the Defense Department and the Office of the Vice President. You MUST suspect that declassifying documents is a political decision rather than a national security one. You must suspect this because all the evidence pulls you toward that suspicion. And the result is nothing less than a criminal enterprise run out of the Oval Office, concerned only with aggrandizing power at the expense of the rule of law and the Constitution. I'm not usually this forceful, but at this point, it's hard to argue otherwise.