Wow

Just Wow.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

This may or may not have anything to do with the actual Valerie Plame leak. But it's still a big deal. Basically the President is authorizing selective information bolstering his contentions for war, if we are to believe Libby. In the above article Libby claims the President did this after the war had begun, but in other testimony Libby suggests he was authorized to leak classified information BEFORE the war.

This all plays into a very coherent narrative. The White House would let certain classified information go out into the press, but only those statements that implicate Saddam in having WMD. The press, particularly those like Judy Miller with close relationships with senior officials, then play up these reports in their stories, hyping the threat in the run-up to the war. The White House would then link back to those stories, saying things on the morning talk shows like "We all saw the report today in the New York Times" when THEY in fact set that report in motion.

After the invasion, when the stockpiles of WMD aren't found, and when Joseph Wilson starts making rumblings about false statements on yellowcake in Niger, the White House resorts to what worked before the war: they start leaking classified documents to reporters again. And the President, along with the Vice President, authorize this disclosure. They're leaking this information to knock down Wilson's claims, and to undercut his credibility. If the exposure of Plame's identity is considered part of this classified information that the President allowed Libby to give up, whether implicitly or explicitly, then it's game, set and match. Some will say that as soon as the President authorizes a leak, it becomes immediately declassified. Those same people believe the old Nixon stnadby that "if the President does it, then it's not illegal." Bull. A President who knowingly authorizes leaks for political payback is not fit to lead.

I'm just an amateur Plameologist, I'll leave it to the professionals to make sense of this.