There is bipartisan fury today over the Obama administration’s leak investigations, which have included examining the emails of a Fox News reporter and winning an appeals court ruling that a New York Times reporter can be compelled to testify about leaks he received from a CIA source. The mainstream media is in high dudgeon, as expected, and it is joined, unexpectedly, by many on the right who think that this Democratic president is pursuing a vendetta against conservative critics–an impression certainly fostered by the IRS scandal even though there is no evidence of a White House link to the decision to deny Tea Party groups tax-exempt status.
I have no brief for governmental excesses such as those revealed by the IRS, but let’s not lose sight of the larger picture. As the New York Times itself notes, during President Bush’s second term in office, 153 cases of government officials leaking national security secrets were referred to the Justice Department. Not one of those cases resulted in a single indictment. Bush’s reluctance to prosecute leakers is understandable given the firestorm of controversy that has accompanied Obama’s prosecutions–the criticism would have been a hundred times fiercer against prosecutions ordered by a conservative Republican rather than a liberal former law professor. Nevertheless retired Admiral Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence, is right that this failure to prosecute was “pretty shocking,” and he and Attorney General Eric Holder did what they needed to do by putting more of a push behind leak investigations.
The need for such action is clear given how many secrets have been revealed in recent years, Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning being only two of the higher-profile offenders that have done great damage to national security and given great aid and comfort to our enemies. It is imperative to send a signal that leaking secret documents–and even more highly classified information–will not be tolerated, and the best way to do this is to make leakers pay. And not just lowly leakers such as Private Manning.
Recent word is that retired Marine General James Cartwright may be indicted for leaking information about the Stuxnet virus used to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program–one of the most sensitive secrets in the entire government. I have no idea whether or not he is guilty, but if there is good evidence of his culpability, he deserves to have the book thrown at him to show that rank is no protection for those who betray their obligation to keep secret information genuinely secret.
However suspicious Republicans may be of Obama’s motives, the anti-leaker prosecutions seem well justified and deserving of bipartisan support.
