Dear President Bush: Did You Censor Info on Iran?

[cal04]

(snip)
Reportedly the White House redacted passages from Mr. Leverett’s op-ed even though the information in those passages had already been cleared by the CIA. Mr. Leverett also served as a senior analyst at the CIA.

Well I am deep troubled by all this. And if there was censorship then I believe the White House owes the American people an explanation.

So today my office sent off the enclosed letter demanding explanation from the President on why the White House intervened in this matter and decided to redact information on Iran, which reportedly had been cleared by the CIA.

Here is the letter:

December 19, 2006

The President
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

I am writing to seek clarification of the processes and policies employed by your Administration in determining whether materials contain classified information and when to withhold information from the public.

According to an article published in the Washington Post today, Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council Advisory, who left the Administration in 2003, suggested that the White House had redacted substantial passages of an opinion article on Iran. According to Mr. Leverett, this article was "only a summary of a longer paper" he had written a few weeks earlier which the CIA had cleared as "containing no classified information."

I am concerned that your Administration is employing inconsistent policies when classifying information. If, indeed, redacting the information from the op-ed was necessary for national security purposes, then the CIA’s failure to deem the information in the previously published version of the article as classified may have put our security at risk. If classifying information in the previously published version of the article was not necessary, then I am left to believe that your Administration redacted information for political purposes.

I would also appreciate an explanation behind your Administration’s decision to redact substantial passages from Mr. Leverett’s op-ed, even though reportedly the CIA had already cleared the information based on which Mr. Leverett had drafted those passages

Given the questions this incident raises about your Administration’s consistency in applying policies and processes to reviewing classified information and your willingness to allow criticism by the national security and intelligence communities that disagree with your policies, I ask that you clarify and explain policies pertaining to how and when information is deemed classified and also your decision to intervene in the publication of the article written by Mr. Leverett.

Thank you for reviewing my request, and I await your response.

Sincerely,

Louise M. Slaughter
Member of Congress
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/20/103117/48

[madrchsod]

1. bush does`t understand that we know what is going on and why

well we have a very good idea. he thinks he can control the issue by censoring the information that is given to him. this only goes to show how delusional and dangerous he really is. the Iranian people just rejected the conservatives in the latest elections and placed moderates in local and "national" political offices. the whack job president lost his majority in the government yet bush thinks no one noticed? the rest of the world noticed but he thinks they did`t? only the american people did`t know because our news networks refused to carry the story.
so we are going to war with a country that has shifted to a more moderate position..only in bush`s delusional world would this make any sense

[tnlefty]

2. You have no idea how much I'd love to have a Rep. like Rep. Slaughter!

Along with others whom I admire, but I'm stuck with a Bush** rubberstamper.