Can we please begin the investigation and subpoenaing of
journalists—also known as witnesses to a crime—for leaking
classified national-security information in a time of war?!
Libby
Bill Bennett
The Corner
One simple observation about the Libby trial and the celebrations by the media, the Left, and the Joe Wilsons: Now that we have established that no rock and no expense will be left unturned and unspent, that no reporter involved will be left unsubpoenaed for leaking or even purportedly leaking a classified agent's name, when we have some suspicion that a person who works at the CIA might be covert (but turns out not to be): Can we please begin the investigation and subpoenaing of journalists—also known as witnesses to a crime—for leaking classified national-security information in a time of war?!
—I'm not making a partisan point, I'm making a serious point about serious breaches of law and public endangerment; I'm not talking about disgruntled spouses with political differences with the president, I'm talking about the disclosure of the most serious war-time planning and procedures to keep our country safe. I'm talking about disclosing the secret detention facilities of high-value terrorists, I'm talking about the disclosure of terrorist surveillance programs, I'm talking about the disclosure of the Treasury Department's SWIFT program that tracked terrorist financing—all of which are now caput because insiders leaked to the press and the press willingly published these classified secrets—-NONE of the programs that were leaked were illegal, all of them were of great value, all of them are over or changed as a result of the disclosure.
—Can we please start a serious investigation of those, and by all means subpoena the witnesses, that is to say the reporters. If you can do it to nail bit players in a seemingly innocent disclosure of Valerie Plame's name where her husband started the process, then you can certainly do it over serious anti-terrorism programs that were of the highest level of classification.
—As for the import of Libby's conviction and Joe Wilson's allegations? I can't do better than Mark Steyn who wrote yesterday here on The Corner:
"an anti-war deputy secretary of an anti-war department
leaking to an anti-war reporter the name of an anti-war
analyst who got her anti-war husband a job with an anti-
war agency is supposedly an elaborate “conspiracy” by
Cheney, Rove and the other warmongers. Looked at more
prosaically, it’s a freak intersection of bad personnel
decisions, which is one of the worst features of this
presidency. So many of the Bush administration’s wounds
come from its willingness to keep the wrong people in key
positions: Tenet should not have been retained at the CIA,
Armitage should not have been at State."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGZlYWYwMmVhMTQ1MDhkMWY3Zjc2MWI2NzgxMTVkYTQ= |
