Posted on 04/29/2006 7:46:22 AM PDT by harpu
No, there's not a recent deluge of leaks of classified information. The numbers are consistent with those in the past couple of decades. What is different today is that the kid gloves are off regarding the government's treatment of reporters. Thanks to the clamoring by editorial pages of many major newspapers -- which resulted in Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald investigating the publishing of CIA employee Valerie Plame's name -- case law makes it clear that journalists can be hauled before the grand jury and forced to cough up their sources, or face Miller time in jail.
Editorial writers professed to be shocked and appalled by the leaking that led to columnist Bob Novak publishing Ms. Plame's name (in the context that perhaps nepotism was involved in the CIA sending her husband on a mission for which he was unqualified).
- snip -
During my tenure in government a leak investigation might begin, but everyone knew that when it got down to the nitty-gritty of subpoenaing the reporter the investigation would grind to a halt. By that time, whoever had called for the investigation, usually a member of Congress (but never the press), had moved on to other matters. And the Justice Department would get credit for at least having gone through the motions.
- snip -
In Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation, he has yet to provide any evidence there was an actual crime committed in the course of providing Ms. Plame's name to the press. And yet he still sent a journalist to jail. By so doing, he has shifted the presumption of whether to subpoena journalists. If the media want to know whom to blame for the spate in serious investigations of their reporting classified information, they should look in the mirror.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ms. Toensing, a Washington lawyer, is a former chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.
Please....I've been dying to read some serious commentary on the subject without all the spin that the liberal media puts on it.
Seems to me the difference in leaks between th9is administration and the last, is the in the last administration, the leaks were about personality items. Who did what to whom, and who was, or wasnot diddling who.
With these latest leaks, they are about defeating the United States in a war agaionst those who have killed 3000 plus of our fellow citizens, in order to gain some politcal power play advantages, and the evil done to the country is not considered by those who leak.
Mary McCarthy should be allowed to join her rightful place in amercian history with Benidict Arnold, Alger Hiss and John Walker.
I would very much appreciate it if you would send me the story. Victoria Toensing is brilliant.
Yes, please!
Please.
You forgot Julius and Ethel Rosehberg, whose fate she should also suffer. Arnold didn't suffer that fate only because the British wouldn't exchange him for Major Andre, who was a true English patriot.
Thanks for the article. The three judge panel in the Judith Miller case also tried to make the distinction between "good leaks" and "bad leaks". Too bad for Ms Miller that her fellow journalists didn't think that hers was the "right" case to fight for protecting a sources.
| Father of the Bush Doctrine George Shultz on pre-emption and the Revolt of the Generals. ^ |
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| Posted by aculeus On News/Activism ^ 04/29/2006 5:16:26 AM CDT · 38 replies · 1,611+ views Opinion Journal ^ | April 29, 2006 | BY DANIEL HENNINGER SAN FRANCISCO--George P. Shultz was the secretary of state of the United States during the years that the Soviet Union was led, successively, by Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev. During those years, 1982 to 1989, the United States was led by Ronald Reagan. At the end of our interview, as he was showing me out of his apartment, Mr. Shultz invited me to stop in the dining room. "I want you to see something," he said. We walked over to a table. "Have a look at that. It arrived in the mail the other day." It... |
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This whole affair, in my mind, provides definitive and irrefutable evidence of the mainstream media's ideological, even nakedly partisan, political bias. How else do you explain the initial dramatic and nearly universal reaction of the press, calling frantically for the exposure, firing and prosecution of the Plame leaker? I remember those early press conferences. It was like panicked medieval peasants calling for the burning of witches.
So here you had, and still have, the press arguing, even passionately clamoring, in direct and emphatic opposition to their own professional interests (which would be to encourage or at least protect leakers)!
There's simply no other explanation for such a remarkable occurrence other than partisanship, and extreme, even fanatical, partisanship at that.
Excellent piece...I suggest all should give it a look.
I thought so when I read it earlier.
"I've been dying to read some serious commentary on the subject without all the spin that the liberal media puts on it."
Here's the direct link.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008310
Fitzgerald has spent years and MILLIONS of taxpayers' hard earned dollars "investigating" what any beat cop in America could have determined in 24 hours;
Valerie Plame WAS NOT A COVERT CIA AGENT at the time.
Plame was a CIA DESK JOCKEY, nothing more.
next case...
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