David Gregory is both a mush headed, lazy Beltway MSM courtesan, as well as a hypocrite and potential future accused (cough) journalist traitor co-defendant of Glenn Greenwald -- since both have reported on classified state secrets gotten from government informants.
We're all familiar with the now-famous (and deliciously disdainful Greenwald pwn of Gregory) exchange:
Turns out, however, that in the SAME DAMN SEGMENT, Gregory discussed still-classified FISA Court information himself, gotten from a confidential government informant!
As the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others have much discussed in the current debate about American NSA and other spying on domestic and foreign communication, the ability to use confidential government leakers is critical to the healthy functioning of the American press and democracy in general
Leaks Are Vital For Democracy and the NSA Revelations Are the Quintessential Example Why
When looking back at the past decade, it’s hard to think of a constitutional scandal that wasn’t first brought to the public’s attention by a leak to the press. Bush’s NSA warrantless wiretapping program, black site prisons, torture, CIA drone strikes, and offensive cyberattacks are just some of the examples.
Leaks, while controversial, remain vital to democracy when the government shuts off traditional avenues of transparency and accountability. And there has never been a better example of this than the recent revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
But despite David Gregory's high-horse insinuations about law-breaking in the Greenwald interview, he himself is a big fat hypocrite who is
guilty of divulging classified secret government information.
On David Gregory and Standing Up For Journalists' Constitutional Rights
Literally minutes before, in the same segment, Gregory explained what government officials told him about a secret FISA court opinion from 2011 that ruled some of NSA’s surveillance unconstitutional.
GREGORY: With regard to that specific FISA opinion, isn’t the case, based on people that I’ve talked to, that the FISA opinion based on the government’s request is that they said, well, you can get this but you can’t get that. That would actually go beyond the scope of what you’re allowed to do, which means that the request was changed or denied, which is the whole point the government makes, which is that there is actual judicial review here and not abuse. Isn’t this the kind of review and opinion that you would want to keep these programs in line?
Yet, as PFF notes:
The contents of that opinion are still classified, and in fact, just last week, the Daily Beast called FISA court opinions some “of the most highly classified documents inside the U.S. government.” Does David Gregory think he should be charged with a crime for talking to sources, asking questions about classified information, and then reporting what he learned?
Thus, by hypocrite David Gregory's standard, shouldn't he be branded a traitor for divulging secret state information from an informant, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law? Particularly since Greenwald is 100 times more a journalist than Gregory will ever be?