Whoever Leaked the Underwear Bomber Story Ought to Be Nervous [damaging for undercover agents]

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/05/whoever-leaked-underwear-bomber-story-ought-be-nervous ^ | 9:37 AM ET 5/14/2012 | JOHN HUDSON

[fight_truth_decay]

The heat is on a U.S. official responsible for leaking details of al Qaeda's disrupted bomb plot to the Associated Press.

On the Sunday talk shows, high-ranking officials in both chambers of Congress across both parties called for investigations and the prosecution of the man or woman who leaked details about the infiltration of al Qaeda's Yemen branch. Unlike previous situations, where government crackdowns on leakers has been criticized, this is appears to be a fairly clear-cut case of improper leaking.

The mission, which resulted in the recovery of a sophisticated underwear bomb, was leaked to the AP before it was completed, according to members of Congress sitting on intelligence committees. Because successfully infiltrating al Qaeda is so rare, leaks can be especially damaging for undercover agents who risked their lives to gain the enemy's trust. It was a case powerful members of Congress were making loud and clear yesterday.

[tacticalogic]

Call me cynical, but I have doubts about any call by the liberals to investigate wrong doing by one of their own. Usually it's just a ploy to keep it covered up by giving them an excuse to not talk about it while it's "under investigation".

It will be "investigated" until everyone has forgotten about it, or they can manufacture the evidence they need to pin it on the designated fall guy.

[glyptol]

Nothing like a courteous response. There is a coma after thanks for future reference.

[InterceptPoint]

Ask yourself: Did this leak help Obama look like he is getting the bad guys before they get us. Like SuperObamaMan? Will it help him win re-election?

The answer to all of these questions is YES and you don’t have to think about it much more than that to figure out who’s the source of this leak.

[newzjunkey]

Let’s see, to the Left and MSM the Valerie Plame thing was practically a constitutional crisis... wrong party in the White House so this will elicit crickets.

[editor-surveyor]

This is S.O.P. for the NYT.

[Despot of the Delta]

President Jarrett leaked it.

[T. P. Pole]

If I was running this show, once I had extracted all the info available, and extracted all my people, I would "leak" something like this so that the remaining bad guys would not trust each other. Maybe they were only able to get one guy in, and now that he is out, they want to destroy internal confidence.

Of course, that requires competence, a quality sorely lacking in most entities.

[Sunshine Sister]

I’ll believe it when a serious investigation that gets reported on happens. Until then I bet money this is swept under the rug, just like always!