Max Sawicky caught this ABC News article in which an Administrations spokesman claims that since the President has the authority to declassify something it basically means by definition he can't be considered a leaker... "It's like accusing a shopkeeper of shoplifting from himself" we're informed. What it is is abuse of the classification system for political ends and their defense rests on the kind of legalistic hairsplitting that the media used to pound the Clinton Administration over.
What happened here? The President didn't authorized that the entire NIE paper be declassified and shown to the media and the general public, he authorized select "favorable" passages be made available to one "friendly" reporter in hopes of deflecting political criticism of his decisionmaking leading up to the Iraq war.
Moreover, he was so confident that what he was doing was correct, within his inherent powers and done according to all previously established protocols that he avoided all previously established protocols and neglected to inform various intelligence officials (CIA, NSA, etc.) of his decision.
Furthermore, since he was in the right, instead of directly and personally providing this friendly reporter (ie. Judith Miller) with said NIE passages or even showing copies of the "declassified" passages to a national television audience, he took it a step further and decided that information should first pass through his Vice President and then the Vice President's Chief of Staff before it got to the reporter.
Finally, the friendly journalist who received the scoop did not mention that she got the information directly from the President, Vice-President or the VP's Chief of Staff when she used this information in her reporting.
If this is on the up and up and proper why does it seem like there was a conscious effort to keep the President's role in it all so insulated? Also, are you telling me something was declassified and given to only ONE reporter, who doesn't have any sort of security clearance to begin with? Seems like an awful lot of sneaking around and obfuscation for something that isn't a leak, wouldn't you say?