Building on Trent Duffy’s devastating op-ed, I just want to discuss one aspect of McClellan’s account that strikes me as particularly disingenuous. McClellan has cited Bush’s partial declassification of an intelligence report as playing a critical part in his own disillusionment. According to McClellan, this exposed the President’s hypocrisy, since the administration has been very critical of newspapers that publish classified information. But this makes absolutely no sense. Unless McClellan believes the president declassified sensitive information that made the United States more vulnerable to attack, the so-called leaks are not analogous. When newspapers publicize classified intelligence gathering methods, they break the law and reduce the value of such methods in acquiring actionable intelligence. The president’s declassification was different. Not only does Bush possess the legal authority to declassify information (as McClellan acknowledged on CNN), the material at issue was only valuable insofar as it affirmed the administration’s public claims.
