I had the good fortune to miss Cheney's love fest with Fox News, but it appears he might have accidentally said something interesting. Something that, at any rate, merits additional investigation.

Hume: Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?

Cheney: There is an executive order to that effect.

Hume: There is.

Cheney: Yes.

Hume: Have you done it?

Cheney: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order –

Hume: You ever done it unilaterally?

Cheney: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.

Interesting indeed...especially since multiple reviews of the order he cites don't give him that authority. As we read at The Carpetbagger Report:

The VP has some fairly broad authority to classify materials, but the VP can't be his own declassification machine. Cheney wouldn't respond to the question yesterday about whether he has unilaterally exercised this power, but it's clear the VP was arguing that he could.

You'll recall Libby's statements that he had been authorized to share classified material? All of a sudden this matters big time.

Others commenting:

Connect Left

...has Cheney -- the de facto President the past 6 years, simply forgotten that he's actually second-in-command?

Transparent Grid should be read in full.

Because the Vice President does not appear to be the “originating authority,” Cheney did not seem to have the authority to declassify the NIE since the agency that classifies has the responsibility to determine whether to declassify for the public interest. In this case, the White House selectively disclosed portions of the NIE to make its case to make war on Iraq and there is no indication that the CIA or National Intelligence Council authorized its disclosure.

Andrew Sullivan:

The first print mention of Wilson's dissent from the White House line was in May 2003. So the time-line for a clear connection doesn't work. All we can say is that Cheney's new authority to leak classified information came at a time when the administration's claims about WMDs were beginning to look weak. Not long thereafter, Plame was outed.

David Corn:

It seems as if Cheney might not be free to declassify, on his own say-so, a National Intelligence Estimate so an aide can slip portions of it to a reporter to help the White House politically. But there is some ambiguity here. Which is why it might be useful for a congressional committee to examine the issue. But I'm not expecting any Republican committee chairman to invite Cheney to testify about this any time soon.

Crossposted