Democrat Lodges Complaints Over Leaks From Bush Camp

[seemslikeadream]

By JAMES RISEN

Published: September 10, 2004


ASHINGTON - The ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee has charged that senior Bush administration officials have disclosed classified information to a prominent journalist "for partisan purposes," sending a message to government officials that leaks "receive blessings from the very top."


In two stinging letters to the Central Intelligence Agency, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained that administration officials had provided a "torrent" of classified information to the journalist, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, for his 2002 book "Bush at War."

In letters written in March and again this month, Mr. Rockefeller questioned why the disclosure of so much classified information had not been taken more seriously. In March, Mr. Rockefeller asked the agency whether it had considered issuing a criminal referral to the Justice Department to investigate the disclosures. The letter included a series of passages from the book that Mr. Rockefeller cited as potential examples of the disclosure of classified information.

The agency has issued referrals to the Justice Department in other recent cases, but not in connection with Mr. Woodward's book.

In his letter in March to the agency's director then, George J. Tenet, Mr. Rockefeller argued that "senior administration officials" appear to have engaged in "a brazen effort to exploit highly classified information for partisan purposes." He added that the disclosures of so much information for Mr. Woodward's book "send a message, whether in the White House or elsewhere in the government, that leaks of classified information receive blessings from the very top.''

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/10/politics/10leak.html

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Are we on a two year delay?

:shrug:

[UpInArms]

2. this mal-administration has a great big

circular file that they have been putting all of these types of "complaints" into.

:grr:

[Just Me]

3. Hmmm,...fascinating,....

,...

It appears that there are those who are FINALLY prepared to "play the game",...

When this is finally over,...I do hope that all those whose passions have been activated will stay in this for the long haul,...

[shraby]

4. Rockefeller is pissed about

the intelligence study that only half was allowed to be put out to the public and the half that had about the Office of Special Plans in it had to be held for after the election.