President Moves Goalpost On Handling Security Secret

President Moves Goalpost On Handling Security Secrets

July 19, 2005

Despite obfuscation from the president’s allies, the public has learned a disturbing and unassailable truth: senior members of the presidential and vice presidential staffs were involved in the outing of a covert CIA operative as an act of political revenge against a critic of the administration’s case for war in Iraq. Seeking to cover up these misdeeds, the White House then lied about the role of Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the affair, saying it was “ridiculous” to claim they were involved. Furthermore, President Bush promised Americans he would fire anyone involved in the leak but backtracked yesterday saying he would only fire those who committed a crime. President Bush’s refusal to hold his own staff members accountable for leaking sensitive national security information violates the public’s trust and undermines those on the front line fighting terrorism.

• The White House said Karl Rove and “Scooter” Libby had no involvement in the outing of a covert CIA operative. For two years, the White House has told Americans that the president’s senior adviser, Karl Rove, and the vice president’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, played no role in the leaking of sensitive national security information. White House spokesman Scott McClellan stated definitively about Rove’s involvement in 2003, “I've made it very clear, from the beginning, that it is totally ridiculous. I've known Karl for a long time, and I didn't even need to go ask Karl, because I know the kind of person that he is, and he is someone that is committed to the highest standards of conduct.”
  
  
• This is a proven lie: both Rove and Libby were directly involved in leaking classified information. The public now knows that Rove and Libby were direct sources in stories about CIA operative Valerie Plame by journalists Robert Novak and Matt Cooper. Regardless of the outcome of the ongoing criminal investigation, Americans can be certain that senior officials in the administration sought to discredit an opponent by exposing his wife’s covert identity and then lied to cover it up.
  

• President Bush has moved the goalpost by refusing to hold leakers accountable for undermining U.S. security. Although he once claimed that leaking was a “very serious matter,” the president yesterday changed the standard stating that there is nothing wrong with leaking classified information unless it violates the law. The president who proclaimed a new era of “responsibility” is now avoiding all responsibility for holding his own appointees accountable for their actions.