Bush administration cracks down on leaks Sun Mar 5, 4:34 PM ET
In a bid to limit leaks of classified information, the administration of President George W. Bush has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources, a US newspaper reported.
Citing unnamed law enforcement and intelligence officials, the The Washington Post newspaper said dozens of employees of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed in recent weeks by FBI agents, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program.
Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from the Justice Department prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, the report said, citing sources familiar with the notices.
FBI agents from Los Angeles have already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case in Lodi, California, the paper said.
Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, The Post said.
And they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House, the report pointed out.
"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," the report quotes New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller as telling the paper.
"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," Keller said. |
