By David Edwards on 4/17/2006, 5:58pm PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com


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Colbert King, Deputy Editor of the Washington Post, appeared on this Sunday's edition of Inside Washington, a political show that's broadcast in the D.C. area. Mr. King was asked to defend an editorial recently published in the Washington Post which was titled "A Good Leak." The editorial supported President Bush's position that he participated in partial leaks of the National Intelligence Estimate for the good of the public.

From Mr. King's response it was clear that he had differences but attempted a defense of editorials flawed arguments:

MR. PETERSON: Colby, I want to ask you a question about your newspaper because the lead editorial in your newspaper on Sunday was entitled "The Good Leak," and it was about the leak of intelligence information that went through Cheney to Scooter Libby and then to Judy Miller and so forth. Why ? now, the president can do whatever he wants with intelligence; why a leak and why call it a good leak?

MR. KING: Well, I'm deputy editor of the editorial page, so let me first take a sip of my Kool-Aid ? (laugher) ? and step up and take one for the team. What we were trying to say is that the president had every right to declassify the information and present to the public the information from the National Intelligence Estimate that supported that particular argument about the attempts on the part of the ? of Saddam Hussein to acquire ?

MS. TOTENBERG: You can spit it out.

MR. KING: ? enriched ?

MR. PETERSON: Uranium.

An editorial with a different opinion of President Bush's leak called "A Bad Leak" appeared in Sunday's The New York Times.

This broadcast first aired on Sunday, April 17, 2006. The full transcript is available from the Inside Washington site. More details are available at The Raw Story.

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