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General discussion

Snow: O'Neill did take classified info

Feb 7, 2004 9:56PM PST
Treasury O'Neill Book Author Got Classified Documents

Documents former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gave to an author who used them to write a critical book on President George W. Bush did contain classified information, the current secretary, John Snow said in a letter to Congress obtained by Bloomberg News.

O'Neill, who was fired by the president in December 2002, was the main source for the book, ``The Price of Loyalty,'' written by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind. He gave Suskind 19,000 documents that crossed his desk during his 23 months at the department and which were given to him on his request months after his departure from government.

Those documents ``were not properly reviewed'' by the Treasury before they were given to O'Neill, Snow said in the letter to Representative Adam Putnam, chairman of a panel on the House Government Reform Committee that oversees information policy.

``In recent weeks, Treasury personnel have conducted a systematic review of the documents released to Mr. O'Neill,'' Snow wrote. ``We have identified a number of documents that contain classified information, and we are taking corrective action concerning those documents.''

Snow, attending a meeting in Florida of finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial nations, was not immediately available for comment.

A Treasury official who declined to be identified said no action would be taken against O'Neill or Suskind and that the department was focusing on improving its handling of classified material....


Evie Happy

Discussion is locked

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And we wonder why...............
Feb 8, 2004 3:20AM PST

.......our intelligence efforts don't get cooperation, and we are not trusted by "our friends" ?

Our bureaucrats cannot keep secrets........simply said.

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Re: Snow: O'Neill did take classified info
Feb 8, 2004 6:16AM PST

Hi, Evie.

Typical "attack the messanger, ignore the message" approach. O'Neill's claim that the Bush folks were looking for a pretext for war with Iraq from Day One fits most availabe evidence, so the way to avoid answering the hard questions is divert attention with this stuff. Same as the right wing's approach to the Ellsberg papers...

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

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Typical of you blah blah blah
Feb 8, 2004 7:44PM PST

I do feel sorry for you that the O'Neill kerfuffle didn't take wings and fly for you. Read this January '03 Kerry speech. He seems to think that Iraq *should* have been job one immediately post 9/11. Funny ... no letters to the Prez a la 1998 have surfaced for him voicing his position.

Since he appears to be destined to be your candidate, let's look at a few other choice Kerry quotes (and other Democrat "liars" <-- if Bush is one, so are they! at the link)

"[W]e urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
Letter to President Clinton. - (D) Senators Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, others, Oct. 9, 1998

"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002 | Source

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real..."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003 | Source


That you are still hyping a contingency plan handed down to the Bush administration from the previous one as some "smoking gun" would be laughable if it weren't so sad to see a man of your intelligence so swayed by partisanship.

Evie Happy

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Perpetrating a lie there Dave...
Feb 9, 2004 4:19AM PST
"O'Neill's claim that the Bush folks were looking for a pretext for war with Iraq from Day One fits most availabe evidence, so the way to avoid answering the hard questions is divert attention with this stuff."

O'Neill himself claims otherwise. "But O'Neill said his comments have been distorted to suggest last year's invasion of Iraq was being planned from the beginning of the administration." (and surely you can believe what the Clinton Network News reports http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/13/news/economy/oneill/?cnn=yes

That should shoot down your assertion that he claimed otherwise.

This comment is also troubling - ?Everything's there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten "thank you" notes, 100-page documents. Stuff that's sensitive,? says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security Council meetings. ?You don?t get higher than that.? Because it indicates that he was either aware of classified documents that he passes on the Suskind or was derelict in vetting them as EVERYONE who has a government security clearance has to agree to under penalty of law on losing that clearance.

Maybe you should simply take another look at the "available evidence".
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and, of course, O'Neil had no idea what was in the documents when he turned them over to a reporter.
Feb 8, 2004 11:39AM PST

Sounds almost like plausable deniability doesn't it?