Suddenly, congressional leaders of both parties are demanding investigations into serial disclosures of national security secrets on President Obama's watch. The truth of the matter is that we already know what we need to about these leaks. The question is: Will anybody do anything about it?
Of course, the leaks themselves are already out there - prominently featured, for example, on the front pages of the New York Times. We know of the compromise of techniques used to defend our country through cyberwarfare, drone attacks, covert operations and what turned out to be other nations' successful penetration of terrorist cells.
We also know that, in every case, the leakers' handiwork portrayed Barack Obama as a highly effective, decisive, muscular and hands-on Commander-in-Chief. Sadly, the President's overall record shows him to have been anything but, hence the need to pump up his street creds as part of the reelection campaign.
If the damage done for what are, on their face, nakedly political purposes were not so serious, the President's remark last week that he finds "offensive" suggestions that "his White House" could have been responsible would be hilarious. Yet, it seems certain that his Justice Department's investigation will shed no helpful light on the degree of involvement by the Executive Office of the President or, in case he was parsing his words deliberately, the culpability of those who work for him elsewhere in the government. At a minimum, that will certainly be true between now and the November election.
As former federal prosecutor-turned-bestselling author Andrew McCarthy has observed (http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/06/09/latest-in-leak-farce-the-special-counsel-folly/), Attorney General Eric Holder has jujitsued legislators' demands for a special prosecutor into a review by two U.S. Attorneys that will not only take, in all likelihood, a year or more to complete. Worse yet, their investigation will also be used as a pretext to thwart congressional inquiries into the leaks for the duration of that probe.
This is all the more ridiculous in light of what we already know: People working for Barack Obama have been talking to the media. Some, like longtime Democratic political operative and current National Security Advisor to the President Tom Donilon, have actually allowed themselves to be named as sources. |
