Bush can "prove" he didn't spy on innocent Americans if he wants

[jmowreader]

What I don't get is why Bush doesn't use his propaganda organ to "end the controversy" over the NSA scandal.

Every classified document ever produced in the United States has a declassification date on it. For everything except intelligence-related items, the date is, by statute, 30 years from the date of publication. At the bottom of the document is a "declassification line" that states the date the item is to be declassified. It looks something like this: "DECL: 2 JAN 2006."

Intelligence is different. Because of "sources and methods," a lot of intelligence is never declassified because if you know what you're looking at, you can tell how a piece of information was collected by reading a report. The declassification line on intelligence reads: "DECL: OADR."

OADR = Originating Agency's Determination Required

The Executive Office of the President is the Originating Agency for these tasking lists. And because the President of the United States is supposedly in charge of it, he is the declassifying officer.

What Bush should do if he wants to try to shut down the "he spied on Americans!" thing is to have his secretary pull up the Word files that contain the taskings; remove all the Democrats, non-RW Republicans, peace activists, liberal journalists, gay-rights activists, pro-choice heavies, animal-rights activists, bloggers, Bartcop, all the Americans who don't like the bastard, from them; type "DECLASSIFIED ON 3 JAN 2006 by GEORGE W. BUSH" at the bottom of the documents; print them out; and walk them over to Faux News' DC bureau.

Look. The people who work for al Qaeda know they're being spied on by the United States. They knew it was part of the job when they signed up. And you're not going to destroy national security by telling them the obvious. Bush could produce a "who's who in terrorism 2006" document and the only thing that would happen is some people would think Bush was coming clean.

'Course, the shit would definitely fall apart if General Hayden got on Keith Olbermann's show right after Faux published Bush's list and said, "that's not the list we got." But the shit's falling apart anyway.

[SamuelAlito]

1. What you're missing

is the fact that the perfectly ordinary Americans who are not part of Al Quaeda who were spied on are also guilty. Why? Because they were spied on, that's why.

The Right Honorable Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
(the A stands for Awesome

[jmowreader]

2. Well, that makes sense

Welcome to DU, Your Honor!