Did Bush Control What Was Leaked?

In his blog, Whatever Already!, Murray Waas raised the question several weeks ago of whether the Bush Administration had authorized the leak of classified information. He was talking about Bob Woodward instead of Judy Miller, but it's instructive to go back a few weeks and reread his article.

I don't believe any of this leak stuff is properly nailed down yet given the cast of characters in the White House trying to make Fitzgerald's job difficult but it looks like Cheney authorized Libby to do some selective leaking and that Cheney was authorized by Bush who allowed the leaking. Selective leaking still puts Bush (as well as Cheney) on the hot seat since using government agencies to lie to Congress is an impeachable offense and it's clear the leaking was about justifying the war on Iraq without bothering to mention the evidence contradicting the claims of the president.

We know the Niger/Iraq uranium nonsense was bogus, we know the aluminum tubes claim was bogus and we know that the mobile weapons lab claim was bogus and we know top officials of the Bush Administration were quite aware of the evidence contradicting their claims. If Bush was involved in selective leaks, then how did he know what to leak? Here's an excerpt from Murray Waas's blog from Feb. 23, 2006:

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.”