BusinessWeek found out this fun fact: Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules. Presidents since Carter have the ability to excuse companies working on some top-secret projects from standard SEC accounting and disclosure regulations. I guess that makes some sense, though it's not clear if any president has used the authority.
So here's what Bush did. On May 5th, the same day that Porter Goss resigned as Director of the CIA Bush delegated this authority to the Director of National Intelligence, now John Negroponte, apparently the first time the power has been delegated. Six days later the NSA domestic spying program was made public.
The article points out how obscure Bush's directive was. The title was "Assignment of Function Relating to Granting of Authority for Issuance of Certain Directives: Memorandum for the Director of National Intelligence." The key sentence was "I hereby assign to you the function of the President under section 13[b][3][A] of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended." It's not clear from the Business Week article if this was unusual or not.
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