The Right to Leak

From Newsbusters:

Yet, there it was: “PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do.”

It’s sad and telling how desperately the Left wants President Bush to have broken the law, so this article in the Washington Post will probably be dismissed or denounced by most of the Left-leaning blogosphere.

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Jeff Goldstein at ProteinWisdom has trouble with the use of the word “leak”:

I still must quibble with the editorial’s title and its use of terms, which suggests that declassifying information in order to get it out to the public is a “leak.”

It is not. It is within the purview of Presidential powers to declassify such information and use it to answer the questions of the press. A leak, conversely, is intended to get information out that someone believes those in power are keeping from the public.