Yesterday, the Justice Department indicted another "leaker," Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a senior adviser for intelligence contractor with the State Department. He's charged with disclosing to a media outlet that the CIA had warned that North Korea planned to respond to new U.N. sanctions with another nuclear test. It seems to me that the public has an interest in knowing this.
Mr. Kim's indictment is the latest in the alarming increase of "leak" investigations and prosecutions under President Obama.
No one knows the details of Mr. Kim's case, but given
- the foolishness of renewing a Bush-era grand jury subpoena against New York Times reporter James Risen
- the sloppiness and inaccuracies of the indictment against former NSA senior official Thomas Drake
- the heavy-handed sentencing of former FBI contract linguist Shamai Leibowitz
- the vilification of Bradley Manning for disclosing the video of an American massacre on unarmed Iraqis and two journalists
--I can only assume that this is more about punishing truth-tellers than protecting properly classified information or state secrets.
Because I know the knee-jerk reaction of many here will be that I think government employees can carelessly blab about anything and everything they want, I will preface this by saying that PROPERLY classified information should be kept secret and that sources and methods--such as nuclear codes, troop movements, etc.--should be kept secret.
But more often than not, using criminal process--especially the vague and ambiguous Espionage Act (which is meant to go after spies, not whistleblowers)--to go after "leakers" (there is no such crime as "leaking") is more about keeping embarrassing information from the public than protecting the national defense.
Probably the most absurd example is the case of Jim Risen, one of the New York Times reporters who won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking the warrantless wiretapping story. The Justice Department renewed a grand jury subpoena that orders him to testify about sources for his 2006 book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. Really?? Risen's book is now four years old and details the problems of a bygone presidential administration. What purpose is served by prolonging the case against him?
Probably the most offensive example is the case of Thomas Drake, the former NSA official indicted for supposedly leaking details of NSA secret domestic surveillance programs to the Baltimore Sun. Tellingly, this is the ONLY indictment stemming from the Bush administration's years-long, multi-million dollar "leak investigation" (including 5 prosecutors and 25 agents) into who revealed electronic eavesdropping on Americans--a bogus investigation to begin with.
The indictment of Drake weaves a sordid tale of intrigue about how he committed dastardly by leaking classified information to a reporter. But what this is really about is that the Baltimore Sun reported extensively on technical problems with a multi-million dollar NSA domestic secret surveillance program (Trailblazer) that lacked legally-required privacy protections when a better, cheaper and legal program (Thin Thread) was available. This embarrassed the government, which indicted the individual it says brought about that embarrassment. Drake never leaked classified information to a reporter and is not charged with leaking classified information to a reporter (he is charged with "willful retention for purposes of disclosure," which is an invented crime that does not exist in the entire U.S. Code.) We would have cheered him under Bush, but now under Obama he is facing 35 years in jail.
And Bradley Manning? The government spin has successfully focused the national conversation on a world-wide manhunt WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (what ever happened to the world-wide manhunt for Osama bin Laden?) and on Manning's sexual orientation and "daddy issues" rather than on the disturbing Collateral Murder video in which an American military guys are gunning-down unarmed Iraqis and high-fiving each other as if it were a video game.
Reviving leftover leak cases and bringing new ones smacks of retaliation, not legitimate protection of sensitive information.
During the Bush years, we at Kos boggled at how the world couldn't see stuff like this for what it really is. But now were are willingly blinding ourselves because it causes such discomfort, such existential dyspepsia of the soul, that President Obama is doing the same--and worse.
P.S. Here is a petition on behalf of Tom Drake that further explains his predicament: http://criminaljustice.change.org/...