Sanger told Downie something else, too: “This is most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.” As US news media and transparency nonprofits tell the tale, the Obama administration has waged an unprecedented legal war against national security whistleblowers and the reporters they spill their secrets to. Even beyond the highly publicized Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden cases, media advocates note, the Obama administration has pursued a record number of criminal prosecutions against alleged leakers of classified material. In doing so, they say, the federal government has repeatedly overreached in dealing with reporters, and not just Sanger: It secretly seized months of phone records associated with Associated Press bureaus and journalists; it obtained emails of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen via a search warrant based on claims he was a co-conspirator, rather than a reporter doing his job; and it attempted to force star New York Times national security reporter James Risen to testify about his sources in a leak case. Echoing Sanger, media advocates complain that the Obama administration has frightened sources inside the federal government so badly that they won’t engage in even routine electronic contact with reporters. There can be a plaintive tone to these criticisms, which often point out that Obama has overseen more leak prosecutions than George W. Bush, the supposed epitome of executive secrecy and national security overreach (and the first president to deal with leaks in the new technological era). The Obama administration, in its defense, insists that it has taken a reasoned course in responding to leaks that have done real, serious harm to the country’s counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering efforts. The Justice Department says it does not go after whistleblowers within the government who proceed through proper channels—such as a complaint to an Inspector General, an official with wide latitude to police behavior within an executive agency—but it does vigorously prosecute federal employees who illegally take it upon themselves to publicize classified information. (Which would describe Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers, even though it likely hastened American withdrawal from Vietnam.) And, the department says, it balances First Amendment concerns with national security and law enforcement interests whenever it considers investigating leaks. These rejoinders also seem to contain wounded undertones, a kind of exasperation that anyone would think an administration headed by a former professor of constitutional law who’s committed to transparency might blithely trample on press freedom. If the debate over leaking and its prosecution has been fiercely argued, the argument has also included elements of political theater. The realities of national-security leaking are more nuanced and ambiguous than the black-and-white, press-freedom-versus-national-security drama presented by both sides. For all the claims that the Obama administration is on a leak prosecution crusade, the uptick in leak cases during the Obama administration is relatively small in absolute terms, and it has occurred within a larger context. In this administration, as in previous presidencies, government officials who leak classified information are very rarely prosecuted, and journalists who receive the leaks have a remarkable degree of insulation from legal consequences, due at least in part to one underlying reality: Leaking is extraordinarily useful to the president and his staff.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 00:10:50 +0000
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