The president has also declared his support for a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources. Holder is meeting with Washington bureau chiefs to discuss the Justice Department's approach. to exhibit more restraint, to better balance the desire to uncover leakers and the need for unfettered information in a democratic society, to target journalists as a last resort. If nothing else, the exercise should impel Holder & Co. "Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," he said. Last week, he ordered Holder to review his approach, saying he was troubled that the array of leak investigations could have an adverse effect on reporting. But regardless, it's Obama's administration, and the responsibility is his.įortunately, the president, stung by the most recent embarrassing revelations, realizes things have gotten out of hand. Instead, it found that a combination of seeming accidents had brought about the record-breaking total.
The New York Times examined the six leak prosecutions and found no evidence of a directive from the top to pursue leakers. Conservatives who still see a press corps infatuated with the president are living in an alternate universe. Similarly, while Obama promised his would be the most transparent administration ever, that's hardly been the case, as any White House reporter will tell you. The liberal Obama was expected to be a president who was deeply concerned about civil liberties, not one whose Justice Department would trample them in its relentless pursuit of leaks. The current administration's stance came as a major surprise. The most notorious foray was when the Nixon administration assembled "the plumbers" in the wake of the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Of course, while they all use leaks to advance their own ends, administrations have been concerned about them as long as there have been administrations. Not surprisingly, the government's case collapsed, a major embarrassment for the Obama Justice Department. Drake told a Baltimore Sun reporter about it. But he was a classic whistle-blower, not another Aldrich Aims or Robert Hanssen.ĭrake's offense? Instead of using a data collection and analysis system that had been developed relatively cheaply in-house, the NSA decided to embrace an expensive alternative that ultimately didn't work. Drake faced the prospect of a lengthy jail term. Take the prosecution - under the Espionage Act, no less - of former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake. But often, the subject matter is far more mundane. It would be one thing if all this Sturm und Drang were about evildoers giving away our nuclear secrets. "Chilling effect" has become a cliché, but that doesn't mean it isn't an accurate description of the potential consequences.
Why does any of this matter? Because prosecuting leakers and going after journalists' records and e-mails is a major deterrent to sources coming forward with important information. The total number by all, yes, all previous administrations? Three. It has launched six prosecutions of leakers and trumpeted that dubious achievement. But even before they surfaced, there was ample evidence that the administration was charting new ground when it came to ham-fisted leak investigations. The AP and Fox sagas have brought the Obama administration vs. The affidavit sounded like an attempt to criminalize the work of a journalist trying to do his job. Rosen's sins? Among other things, while reporting on North Korea's nuclear program, he tried to cajole a source into providing information. It also, in an unprecedented act, said in an affidavit that there was reason to believe the journalist was an "aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" to a crime. In that case, the Justice Department not only obtained Rosen's phone and e-mail records and tracked his movements.
The Fox News episode was even more outrageous.
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