Leak Soup (The Hidden Modo)

In which Maureen Dowd finds God in the details of the revelation this week that someone on high asked an underling to commit betrayal (Divine Right of Bushes fully accessible to Times Select subscribers):

So the aide turns out to have been loyally following his leader's dictates, rather than going around the boss's back to peddle secret information.

Scooter is a "good Judas," as it turns out, just as Judas himself was, according to a 1,700-year-old Christian manuscript found in the Egyptian desert that asserts that Jesus wanted Judas to betray him, so he entrusted his disciple with special intelligence.

"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," Dr. Karen King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, told The Times.

Since President Bush seems to see his mission in Iraq as part of God's plan, he must have assumed that getting Scooter Libby to leak parts of a classified document on Iraq to rebut Joe Wilson's charge about a juiced-up casus belli was part of God's plan.

When other officials leak top-secret stuff — even in cases where the whistle-blowers feel they are illuminating unlawful acts — they are portrayed by the White House as traitors who should be investigated and fired.

After The Times broke the story about the president allowing unauthorized snooping in America, W. was outraged. The F.B.I. and Justice Department were sicced on the leakers. "Revealing classified information," W. huffed, "is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."

[...]

If the administration were seriously trying to declassify something in the national interest, wouldn't it have President Bush explain his decision or have his Scottish terrier yip it out from the podium, rather than having Scooter whisper it in Judy's ear?

Instead, sounding very Lewis Carroll, the White House claims that when the president leaks something secret, it's not secret anymore. It's the Immaculate Declassification: intelligence is declassified by passing it on to a friendly reporter.

[...]

If W. wants the information out, it's good for the country to make it public. If W. doesn't want the information out, it's bad for the country to make it public. L'état, c'est moi.

That's how we got mired in the Iraq war in the first place. The administration ruthlessly held back classified information that contradicted its bogus case for war, and leaked classified information that supported it.

The Bushies keep trying to manipulate reality, but reality bites back. That's not only crass politics. It's lethal politics. L'état, c'est mess.