>>>>
Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected — as well as false and misleading — portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?">>>>
>>>>Defending that position reveals a lot about a person.
>>>
>>>I do not need to defend that.
>>
>>You have been defending that.
>
>Am I not being clear? As far as I know there are
no limits on Presidential authority to declassify information. If there are no limits then the circumstances are irrelevent. Therefore the answer remains yes.
Sure, except when the declassification of that material is also a crime. Revealing the identity of a spy. Nobody (not even the President) can do that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act