So there.

What of it? We haven’t yet established that there was any legal or ethical restriction to balance against the great good of getting the bozo out of the presidency.

Why not provide something about legal or ethical restrictions?

If the stuff was wrong, making it highly classified shouldn’t protect it. Of course there’s always a risk being a whistleblower. If you report secrets and they don’t turn out to be illegal after all, you could get in a lot of trouble. But then, since Nuremburg we’ve said that “I was only following orders” is not an acceptable defense. So you could possibly get in trouble not reporting the crimes too.

So where’s the argument?

Fuck’em

I think you have made quite clear what your real interest is; I gather that, in your view, the good of tipping the election against Bush is greatly outweighs any legal or ethical restriction.

As a last resort, he could have gone public, and stated that the administration was committing crimes, whose natures he couldn’t reveal due to classification.

All of which, if done during 2004, might have tipped the election.

Rule 1.6: Confidentiality of Information

(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).

(b) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:

(1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm;

(2) to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another and in furtherance of which the client has used or is using the lawyer’s services;

(3) to prevent, mitigate or rectify substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another that is reasonably certin to result or has resulted from the client’s commission of a crime or fraud in furtherance of which the client has used the lawyer’s services;

(4) to secure legal advice about the lawyer’s compliance with these Rules;

(5) to establish a claim or defense on behalf of the lawyer in a controversy between the lawyer and the client, to establish a defense to a criminal charge or civil claim against the lawyer based upon conduct in which the client was involved, or to respond to allegations in any proceeding concerning the lawyer’s representation of the client; or

(6) to comply with other law or a court order.

I don’t understand. The program was highly classified; indeed, only a handful of people in the entire government knew about it. Leaking classified information is a crime: think Patrick Fitzgerald investigating the leaks about Valerie Plame, and, for that matter, the presently open investigation into who leaked the NSA surveillance program. What more “proof” do you need?

[…] In the winter of 2002, the CIA began catching top Qaeda terrorists—so-called High Value Targets—like Abu Zubaydah. These hard-case jihadists proved resistant to normal methods of interrogation. In the fevered atmosphere of the time, the Bush administration feared a “second wave” attack from Qaeda sleeper cells still inside the United States. The CIA wanted legal permission to use “coercive methods.”
An August 2002 OLC memo, signed by the then head of the OLC—Jay Bybee—but drafted by Yoo, gave the agency what it needed. The controversial document, which became famous as the “torture memo” when it leaked two years later, defined torture so narrowly that, short of maiming or killing a prisoner, interrogators had a free hand. What’s more, the memo claimed license for the president to order methods that would be torture by anyone’s definition—and to do it wholesale, and not just in specific cases. […]

I know, I know, the OLC works on demand, but a timeline so clear, combined with arguments so specious supporting torture, certainly could make for a good point in a special counsel’s indictment.

Your comment makes no sense. Goldsmith was not practicing before a Court, so he was not acting as the officer of any Court. Are you suggesting that a DOJ lawyer with a disagreement about the law has an absolute trump that lets him violate the law whenever he likes? It sounds like exactly the kind of argument that Bush is making, and that Goldmsith himself was fighting against.