National-security reporters-none of whom have clearances-
    receive classified information for a living. If the 
    government used espionage law to investigate government 
    leaks to the press, the effect would be an unofficial 
    secrets act criminalizing thousands, if not tens of 
    thousands, of annual conversations between sources and 
    reporters.

    Lots of people in DC knew Valerie Plame worked at the 
    CIA, after all. And it was a relevant detail if you were 
    trying to come to a position on whether Iraq had tried to 
    buy uranium in Africa, which was in turn relevant to the 
    non-trivial public policy question of whether the country 
    should go to war. Criminalizing public discussion of the 
    CIA connection--unless the harm to U.S. security from 
    Plame's outing was immense, and the government was trying 
    harder to keep her secret than it apparently was--is 
    troublesome, no? ... Before you say "Nah, lock Rove up," 
    imagine it was an anti-war State Department dissident who 
    faced charges for pointing out that a Republican ex-
    ambassador who claimed to have evidence justifying a war 
    was married to a not-so-covert CIA officer.

    I will be watching for what sort of proportionality we 
    might see between the wrist slap that Sandy Berger 
    received after stuffing highly classified documents in 
    his pants and destroying some of them, as compared to 
    what happens to various White House officials who 
    discussed the identity of Ms. Plame who after all, as 
    Kaus points out, was an open secret at least in 
    Washington DC.

    Of course, one must confess that the Plame affair has 
    already vastly surpassed the Berger story in terms of 
    numbers of articles written and demands for "protection" 
    of our national security apparatus.

    I wonder why that is?

    The truly amusing thing about jumping for the Espionage 
    Act of 1917 is that, ironically, allowing the use of the 
    Espionage Act to punish leaks is literally the last thing 
    the press wants. Indeed, it should be the last thing that 
    the Left wants, too, since its use would be a tool for 
    repression of government whistleblowers every bit as 
    powerful as the Official Secrets Act is in Britain. It 
    would literally mean the end of any notion of open 
    government. . . .

    The thing is, that using the Espionage Act in this way 
    means that the Administration can simply classify 
    anything they don't want the public to know about, and if 
    it gets out, then all the parties involved get to spend a 
    decade behind bars. 

    So much for the First Amendment and a free press.