WashPost
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney gave a surprisingly honest description of how top administration officials treat classified information when he was questioned more than five years ago by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, who was then a covert CIA employee.
According to the FBI report on the May 8, 2004, session, released last week, the vice president was asked about testimony by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his chief of staff. Libby had said Cheney authorized him on July 8, 2003, to disclose classified information from a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq to Judith Miller, then a reporter for the New York Times.
Though the vice president said he could not recall any members of his staff, including Libby, being authorized to talk to Miller at that time, he did give his views on speaking to the news media about information in classified intelligence estimates.
"The vice president advised that it is possible to talk about something contained in a classified document without violating the law regarding declassification," according to the FBI report. Cheney said he had made "numerous statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which were based on and, in some cases, tracked his reading of classified information," including a then-classified Iraq NIE.
(More here.)
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