Specter on Leak: Bush ‘Owes a Specific Explanation to the American People’

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) called on President Bush to come clean about the leak of classified Iraq intelligence to New York Times reporter Judy Miller. Specter said that President Bush “owes a specific explanation to the American people”:

[W]e ought not to have leaks in government. We ought not to have them, and the President is justifiably criticized the Congress for leaking and, of course, the White House has leaked, but we ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated again by the American people.

Watch it:

Full transcript below:

HUME: Is it your view that what the President and the Vice President, as well, did in that matter constituted a leak?

SPECTER: I don’t know, because all of the facts aren’t out, and I think that it is necessary for the President and the Vice President to tell the American people exactly what happened. Brit, I think too often we jump to conclusions before we know what all of the facts are, and I’m not about to condemn or criticize anybody, but I do say that there’s been enough of a showing here with what’s been filed of record in court that the President of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people.

HUME: About the release of this information or what?

SPECTER: Well, he — about exactly what he did. The President has the authority to declassify information. So in a technical sense, if he looked at it, he could say if this is declassified, make a disclosure of it. There have been a number of reports, most recently I heard just this morning that the President didn’t tell the Vice President specifically what to do but just said get it out. And we don’t know precisely what the Vice President did. And as usual, Brit, the devil is in the details. And I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the President said to him, and an explanation from the President as to what he said so that it can be evaluated. The President may be entirely in the clear, and it may turn out that he had the authority to make the disclosures which were made, but that it was not the right way to go about it, because we ought not to have leaks in government. We ought not to have them, and the President is justifiably criticized the Congress for leaking and, of course, the White House has leaked, but we ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated again by the American people.