There’s a current post by emptywheel on The Next Hurrah that’s a real mind bender. It’s about ‘Scooter’ Libby’s defense. He gives two contradicting stories about his leaks of the classified [declassified] National Intelligence Estimate to discredit Joseph Wilson. On the one hand, he says that it was a part of a broad Administration Strategy, leaking this information to a number of people. On the other hand, he is claiming that he was specifically authorized by VP Cheney [and Bush via Cheney] to leak this information to Judith Miller, even checking with David Addington about the legality of declassifying it.
Why does this matter? It’s his explanation for the specialness of the hotel meeting with Judith Miller. Patrick Fitzgerald is saying that special meeting was to leak the identity of Valerie Plame [which is what Judith Miller says]. I’m not so into the vicissitudes of the Libby prosecution as emptywheel or, for that matter, how the Aspens turn together in the West. To be honest, I’m just glad that his pretrial machinations are giving us so much information about what actually went on three years ago.
What interests me is how much we now know. Libby’s defense is that in the set of leaks ordered by President Bush and effected by Vice President Cheney, he was simply a cog in the wheel of the Administration machinery. Let me say that again. What we now know is that even before Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s NYT oped was published, the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and many other Administration officials were involved in a specific, couvert campaign to malign Ambassador Wilson – including outing his wife, an undercover C.I.A. Agent. 
Part of the evidence they were going to use was a very suspect National Intelligence Estimate that was cooked up on short notice to justify an already planned war, and presented as a summary that left out any negative comments.
In their attempts at defense, they are admitting to any number of things they publicly lied about, and, in the process, admitting to the very thing Ambassador Wilson accused them of doing – cooking the intelligence. They are now saying that they did not commit any offenses for which they might be prosecuted, but they are certainly, by their own admission, guilty of behavior unbefitting a President, a Vice President, or a high ranking government official of any kind.
I certainly hope that their admitted behavior is translated into a language that every American can understand. These are hardly Patriots; hardly men of either courage or integrity; hardly men worthy of public office.
Update: Here’s Dan Froomkin‘s version of this same point – What Bush Told Fitzgerald.
Brief but important dig on Addington today @ wmr.
“After Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Addington worked in the General Counsel’s office at the CIA where he helped cover up Director Bill Casey’s secret and illegal role in involving the agency in the Iran-Contra scandal. Addington honed his cover-up skills at the CIA. Working with the Republican minority staff on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and becoming Republican counsel on the Iran-Contra committee, Addington ensured that details of Oliver North’s and Elliott Abrams’ global panhandling for the Contras remained as secretive as possible. After all, many of the countries involved in secretly funding the Contras were dictatorships close to Vice President George H. W. Bush, including Saudi Arabia.” … [more]