Over at the Weekly Standard, founded as the bastion of neoconservative views by William “the bloody” Kristol, Harvard Law School graduate Adam J. White recently waxed poetic about recent revelations that the Bush administration “failed to appraise” Congress of covert CIA programs. Seems White finds nothing illegal in Bush and Co. withholding national security information from the Legislature, since such disclosure might risk national security.
You know, there are Democrats in Congress and who can trust a liberal anyway? Ironically, the claim is actually made on the pages of the Weekly Standard, that the statute in question: 50 USC 413b, from Title 50, Chapter 15, SubChapter III – authorized by writ of the US Congress – requires disclosure of covert activity except as “relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters”. Of course, disclosure to who and what, actually constitutes exceptionally sensitive matters is the real rub. One would think the authors of said statute, would not be the target of such omission. But who knows, perhaps Congress didn’t trust itself?
Of course White, a DC-based associate of Baker Botts — a litigious arm of Halliburton with close connections to Dick Cheney and David Addington, often offers a right-weighted version on state secrets. Back in 2006, White argued in favor of the merger of AT&T and Tele-Communications, Inc. while AT&T was embroiled in controversy over illegal wiretaps. White argued then, that AT&T should be held immune from prosecution for spying on Americans. White truely believes a state secret privilege is inherently democratic, even when the secrets in question hide criminal misconduct. He also asserts that the requirement of national security trumps discloser whenever state secrets are invoked to promote a neoconservative agenda. So there is little surprise, and no new ground broken by the posting of Adam J. White on 17 July 2009 in the Weekly Standard.