|
Crackdown On Leakers Has MSM Panties In A Wad
From al-WaPo, Sunday, March 5, 2006; Page A01:
White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted
The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.
[...]
In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case in Lodi, according to the newspaper.
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.
"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. ...
[Read on here.]
Oh, my, my! All anyone did was break a few laws and pass a few Top Secret defense secrets on to our nation's enemies, and now they might (gasp!) end up in jail! Well cry me a frickin' river! If it was up to me I'd hang the sons-a-bitches and be done with it.
Hat tip: The Dread Pundit Bluto, who writes:
[...]
Excellent news! It's past time for such a crackdown, as recent leaks of classified material to the New York Times amply demonstrate.
[...]
The unauthorized release of classified materials to the press is treason. And treason has never been an American value, except that is, among certain elements of the mainstream press, who value circulation and book sales over the security of their countrymen.
***
Nick Danger at RedState writes:
Leery Washington Post Lays Down Opening Talking Points
[...]
Post reporters have apparently been picking up numerous indications that the Administration is quietly preparing to move aggressively against government "leakers" who have been supplying classified information to reporters. CIA Director Porter Goss recently told a Senate committee, "It is my aim, and it is my hope, that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information."
Perhaps more ominously, at least for Democratic partisans masquerading as reporters, the Justice Department argued in a court filing last month that reporters themselves can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act.
[Read the whole post here.]
***
Ed Morrissey:
Press Finds Petards Most Uncomfortable, Once Hoisted
The Washington Post uses its front page today to note that the Bush administration has taken a hard line on leaks of classified information, apparently taking the law more seriously than previous administrations. In this lengthy complaint about the aggressiveness of the administration in protecting classified information during wartime -- Nixon gets more than one mention here -- the Post gives hardly any attention to the fact that the press started the entire effort with its hysteria over the Plame leak:
[Read on here.]
***
Scott Johnson:
Top secret
One of the deepest secrets in the exposure of the National Security Agency surveillance of al Qaeda-related conversations by the New York Times is that the publication of the story is itself a crime. Publication of the story violates, for example, one highly specific provision (18 U.S.C. section 798) of the Espionage Act that prohibits the disclosure of communications intelligence. Violation of the statute is a felony punishable by imprisonment up to ten years.
The "nearly a dozen" current and former government officials who leaked information regarding the NSA surveillance program to the Times violated the statute. So did the Times itself. Yet the Times has barely mentioned its own legal jeopardy in its continued reporting and commentary on the story.
[...]
***
A J Strata:
Administration Is Cleaning House
The purge of partisan leakers who expose national security programs, meant to provide us all protection from terrorists, is going on in earnest it appears, from a Washington Post article: [...]
It’s about damn time. These leaks are not about whistleblowers - there is a process for that which, surprisingly, doesn’t involve becoming rich off media stories, book deals with media conglomerates, and speaking fees that triple or quadruple the annual income of your typical mid-level bureaucrat . If you don’t think these people are selling us all out for money, then you don’t know DC. There are plenty of ways to deal with illegal acts which, unfortunately for the media, don’t pay a dime and don’t make the news.
[...]
***
Sister Toldjah:
WH cracking down on leaks
[...]
Yet another example of a media double standard. Of course, media double standards at this point should be no surprise to anyone.
[...]
***
Jeff Goldstein:
[...]
Doubtless there is something slightly sinister sounding about the government “launching” an “overt campaign” against the press, but the truth is, such a pushback has been a long time in coming. The press has, on the whole, been relying on a powerful emotional appeal—“the public’s right to know”—to excuse institutional biases that have become increasingly obvious to even the most casual of observers; and over the last generation in particular, that blanket appeal has been used as an all-purpose defense for a culture of leaks and counter leaks that have become all too common inside the beltway, and, when joined to the ideological bent of a mainstream media that is happy to oblige with a particular agenda-driven framing, has had the practical effect of providing undue influence to those who have disagreements with the party in power.
But just because such a dynamic has, by force of habit, become the way business gets done in Washington, doesn’t mean it should get done in such a way. And it is clear, at least to me, that there is a substantive difference between on the one hand, having a healthy distrust of the government, and on the other, allowing those partisans who disagree with the policies of given administration to take advantage of that healthy distrust by manipulating it toward their own ends.
[...]
***
Glenn Reynolds (RTWT):
[...]
Members of the press are, for the most part, appalled. But having made a big deal of leaks and their alleged harm to National Security in the Plame case, they're in a poor position to complain. Bill Keller's outrage is particularly out of place, and his suggestion that the Bush Administration is "declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad" is just a political sound-bite, and not a particularly good one. There's not even a right of journalists to protect leakers under the U.S. Constitution, despite journalists' representations, and doing so has hardly been a slogan on the war on terror. The tendency of the press to conflate its own desire for guild-like special privileges with the protections of the First Amendment is one of the reasons for its decline in trust and popularity.
[...]
Indeed.
***
Roger L. Simon:
War of the Media Worlds
[...]
... The satraps of the Fourth Estate linger on for decades while pols often disappear as quickly as you can say Tom DeLay. Which side deserves more protection? Well, neither do. Both should be subject to inspection, always mindful that the protection of society involves the existence of some kind of functioning intelligence service and that whistle-blowers have agendas of their own. The idea that the press should always be able to protect these sources depends on the mind-boggling premise that reporters will always be objective (who is?), not to mention the assumption that these same reporters and editors would always be able to evaluate accurately the motives of others (who can?). No, the views of mainstream media have become antediluvian on this one. ...
[...]
***
Rob at Say Anything:
Excusing Institutional Biases
[...]
The left/media are going to play this off as the White House attacking the free press. That's just not true. The media has been getting away with exploiting these illegal leaks for far too long. The media engaging in outright combat with the Bush administration in recent years has only served to be the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back.
It is time we plugged some holes. ...
[...]
***
Don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post.
|
