As Bush Did with Judy Miller, Obama Insta-Declassifies for David Ignatius

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One more point about the David Ignatius wankfest today.

In his story pitching OBL as a still-ambitious terrorist rather than an out-of-touch idiot, David Ignatius claimed the documents he based his article on had already been declassified.

The scheme is described in one of the documents taken from bin Laden’s compound by U.S. forces on May 2, the night he was killed. I was given an exclusive look at some of these remarkable documents by a senior administration official. They have been declassified and will be available soon to the public in their original Arabic texts and translations. [my empahsis]

But National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor says that’s not yet the case.

A White House spokesman confirmed that the documents found in the raid are in a declassification process that is “still ongoing,” and National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said it “would likely be a few months before they’re fully available” to the media and public. (The CIA had no comment.) [my emphasis]

Either these documents are declassified, in which case the White House should be handing them out to anyone who asks, or they’re not yet declassified, in which case, someone should be prosecuted for handing them to Ignatius.

The most likely explanation, however, is that the Administration is playing the same game the Bush Administration played with Judy Miller, sharing still-classified documents with a reporter who will spin things in a favorable light, so as to pre-empt any response a
more open assessment of the documents will have. That the Obama Administration is doing it to support his reelection and not an illegal war doesn’t make the ploy any less cynical.

7 replies
  1. Bob Schacht says:

    I can see the mental framework Ignatius and his administration accomplice are using: These docs are going to be declassified anyway, so no harm in giving Ignatius a peek at them, right?

    But this might not really be a case of “Insta-“. In JudyJudyJudy’s case, there was no declassification process in place. In Ignatius’ case, not only was the declassification process in place (so that all assets were forewarned), but the leak didn’t necessarily come from Obama or Biden, but someone in a lower capacity.

    Do we have any info yet on who the probable leaker was?

    Bob in AZ

  4. rugger9 says:

    @Bob Schacht: #1
    There WAS a protocol in place for the JudyJudyJudy leaks, but Darth of the fourth branch operated on the dark side, which he did, and pixie dusted them. In short, only the agency that issues a classification can declassify, under the theory that the agency knew the whys that went with the classification. FWIW OVP wasn’t the CIA, even though Darth thought it was bigger.

  5. Frank33 says:

    Another great Post. We can thank the Special Forces that successfully obtained massive amounts of data, from the raid in Pakistan. The raid very near Pakistan military headquarters. We cannot thank the Intelligence Community. There is NO REASON to keep any of this information secret.

    We do not know about the financial networks of Bin Laden. Why would this be kept secret? So the CIA can use the Bin Laden networks again for more False Flag terror and more repression of Americans.

    But it is a small terrorist world. Bin Laden may have been working with the boss of the terror group, L-e-T, Ilyas Kasmiri. Kahsmiri directed David Headley. It is unlikely that the President would be assassinated by Bin Laden, but Bin Laden may have been part of the planning for the Mumbai attack.

    The man Bin Laden hoped would carry out the attacks on Obama and Petraeus was the Pakistani terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri. Bin Laden wrote:

    “Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work.”

    We have one or zero degrees of freedom separating CIA terrorist David Headley, and Usama Bin Laden and Pakistan ISI. The US government is quite aware of this. Yet they continue to pretend that Mumbai 2008, was “al Qaeda”. The ISI used US equipment for VOIP to tell the Mumbai terrorists who to kill.

    At a news conference in Chicago last week, Fitzgerald vowed to bring the other six Pak-based defendants to justice who have been named in the indictment filed by federal prosecutors before the court.

    Illyas Kashmiri, the Al Qaeda leader; Sajid Mir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba commander; Major Iqbal, said to be a serving officer of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed aka Pasha, another LeT leader; are charged to be involved in the 26/11 attack, besides plotting a major terrorist attack in Denmark.

    “We are hoping to see them brought to justice. We have to take that one step at a time,” US Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald had said.

    And we should mention Headley’ mysterious “travel agency” which seems to be in business. This weird travel agency, in three cities imports all sorts of strange foreign workers, probably some Pakistan, ISI agents.

  7. earlofhuntingdon says:

    @Bob Schacht: “Mental framework” of David Ignatius. I’ll bet that same professor from your freshman year also made a point about assuming facts not in evidence. *g*

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