[Vision2020] Secret Sources Draw Criticism

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (March 5, 2006) Spokesman Review -

File this article under "Say Good-Bye to 'Freedom of the Press'".

"The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information,
has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government
sources."

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Secret sources draw criticism 
Recent leaks spur administration's media crackdown

What's at issue: 

Espionage Act 
A 1917 law makes it a crime for a government official with access to
"national defense information" to communicate it intentionally to any
unauthorized person.
 
Dan Eggen 
Washington Post
March 5, 2006

WASHINGTON - 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 Justice Department warning that
reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security
Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from
the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that
led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic
surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence
officials familiar with the cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies
also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing
even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources
familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether
to approve tougher penalties for leaking.

In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have
contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July
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 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. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it
sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it
professes to be promoting abroad."

President Bush has called the NSA leak "a shameful act" that was "helping
the enemy," and said in December that he was hopeful the Justice Department
would conduct a full investigation into the disclosure.

"We need to protect the right to free speech and the First Amendment, and
the president is doing that," said White House spokesman Trent Duffy. "But
at the same time we do need to protect classified information, which helps
fight . terror."

Disclosing classified information without authorization has long been
against the law, yet such leaks are one of the realities of life in
Washington - accounting for much of the back-channel conversation that goes
on daily among journalists, policy intellectuals, and current and former
government officials.

Presidents have also long complained about leaks: Richard Nixon's infamous
"plumbers" were originally set up to plug them, and he tried, but failed, to
prevent publication of a classified history of the Vietnam War called the
Pentagon Papers. Ronald Reagan exclaimed at one point that he was "up to my
keister" in leaks.

Bush administration officials, who complain that reports about detainee
abuse, clandestine surveillance and other topics have endangered the nation
during a time of war, have arguably taken a more aggressive approach than
other recent administrations, including a clear willingness to take on
journalists more directly.

"Almost every administration has kind of come in saying they want an open
administration, and then getting bad press and fuming about leaks," said
David Greenberg, a Rutgers University journalism professor and author of
"Nixon's Shadow." "But it's a pretty fair statement to say you haven't seen
this kind of crackdown on leaks since the Nixon administration."

But David B. Rivkin Jr., a partner at Baker & Hostetler in Washington and a
senior lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, said the
leaking is "out of control," especially given the unique threat posed by
terrorist groups.

"We're at the end of this paradigm where we had this sort of gentlemen's
agreement where you had leaks and journalists were allowed to protect the
leakers," Rivkin said. "Everyone is playing Russian roulette now."

The New York Times, which disclosed the NSA program in December, and the
Washington Post, which reported on secret CIA prisons in November, said
investigators have not contacted reporters or editors.

Leonard Downie Jr., executive editor of the Post, said there has long been a
"natural and healthy tension between government and the media" on national
security issues, but he is "concerned" about comments by CIA Director Porter
Goss and others that appear to reflect a more aggressive stance. 

In Sacramento, the Bee reported last month that FBI agents had contacted two
of its reporters and, along with a federal prosecutor, had "questioned" a
third reporter about articles last July detailing the contents of sealed
court documents about five terrorism suspects. A Bee article did not address
whether the reporters supplied the agents with any information or whether
they were subject to subpoenas.

Executive Editor Rick Rodriguez said this week he could not comment based on
the advice of newspaper attorneys. Representatives of the FBI and the U.S.
attorney's office in Los Angeles, which is conducting the inquiry, also
declined to comment.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise declined to discuss details of the leak
investigations there but said they were being conducted independently of the
White House and were not aimed at pressuring journalists.

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"

- Thomas Jefferson

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