738 Days

Bill Scher over at the HuffPost reminds the White House that no matter how much backpedaling they do, how much rephrasing, linguical word play they engage, they don't really have a choice in the matter. The Administration is attempting to dodge ethical bullets that multitudinous efforts have been enacted to make it impossible to dodge.

And why would that be? Because the history of Democracy in general and American Democracy specifically requires its populace to trust its government, and the only way to do that is through having protections in place and transparency; both of which The Administration wishes to do away with.

Scher points to Standard Form 312, a White House Staff form which all officials in the White House must sign prior to getting security clearance which bans them from discussing any of this material at any point in time, no matter what:

As GOPers furiously try to bat back The Leak scandal, they generally argue that 1) Rove got his info from a non-classified source, a journalist, and 2) Rove didn't know that info was classified.

That theoretically could save him under one of the laws in question, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

But it would not save him from his SF-312 nondisclosure agreement. [GS Note: link goes to a pdf file]

Under SF-312, it does not matter where he got the info from. It does not matter if he knew it was classified.

If he came across some gossip about a CIA agent, he has an obligation to check with the CIA before he goes blabbing about it.

And under SF-312, the White House cannot simply sit back and wait for a Special Counsel criminal investigation to finish its job. It must do its own investigation and any breach of security requires "corrective action."

If Rove was simply being careless with classified info, he should have his clearance revoked. If he was using classified info for political payback, he should be fired.

Check Ken Melhman's response here.