The Washington Post’s lede p.1 story today is headlined: “Bush Authorized Secrets Release, Libby Testified.”

Again, as established, it’s in the job description of the President to decide what will remain classified (secret) and what will be de-classified and released to the press and public.

But it also should be noted that whatever “secrets” Libby revealed to NY Times reporter Judy Miller were not considered by Miller to be newsworthy enough even to write a story about.

Why not? Suppose for example, that Libby “revealed” the section of the 2002 NIE saying that most agencies of the intelligence community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

He would be releasing what had been a “secret” – a problem if he made that decision on his own; not a problem if he was authorized to do so by the POTUS or VPOTUS.

Why would Judy not have considered that worth a story? Because everyone following this issue already knew that. All Libby would have been adding is the fact that most domestic intelligence agencies concurred.

An important point frequently misrepresented in this debate: Those intelligence analysts that did not concur did not quite disagree either. That is, they were not saying, “No! Saddam has destroyed his WMD and has not been reconstituting his nuclear programs! We know that! We have proof!” Rather, they believed there was insufficient hard data on which to base a firm conclusion either way. And they were correct. Because the CIA had no good human intelligence (why that came about is another issue), analyses were based on speculation and conjecture. Unfortunately, policy makers often have to make consequential decisions based on such sketchy information.

In other words, there is no hint of a scandal here. There is not even any news here, except that we have now learned something that Libby testified. But the fact that Bush authorized the release of secrets is about as surprising as would be a headline saying: “Police Chief Authorized Arrests.”