SEN ROCKEFELLER: BUSH ADMIN AUTHORIZED LEAKS OF CLASSIFIED INFO!

[kpete]

More “authorized” White House leaks: In a letter made public today, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) says the Bush administration “authorized” leaks of classified information to reporter Bob Woodward and suggests the leaks may have damaged national security. ThinkProgress has obtained a copy of the letter. Murray Waas has more.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/02/23/more-authorized-white-house-leaks/#comments


Did the Bush administration “authorize” the leak of classified information to Bob Woodward? And did those leaks damage national security?

The vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) made exactly that charge tonight in a letter to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence. What prompted Rockefeller to write Negroponte was a recent op-ed in the New York Times by CIA director Porter Goss complaining that leaks of classified information were the fault of “misguided whistleblowers.”

Rockefeller charged in his letter that the most “damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by Executive Branch officials pushing a particular policy, and not by the rank-and-file employees of intelligence agencies.”

Later in the same letter, Rockefeller said: “Given the Administration’s continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes, its criticism of leaks is extraordinarily hypocritical. Preventing damage to intelligence sources and methods from media leaks will not be possible until the highest level of the Administration cease to disclose classified information on a selective basis for political purposes.”

http://whateveralready.blogspot.com/2006/02/did-bush-administration-authorize-leak.html

copy of letter at:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/02/rockefeller.pdf