This week's round of leaks are unlikely to result in more Espionage Act prosecutions. They are leaks of ostensibly classified information that appear to be aimed at a particular policy goal and blessed by high level government officials.
The Washington Post reported that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture program is even worse than we already knew.
The report describes previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan — a method that bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques.
Trickling out details of even more sadistic tactics serves to anesthetize us about them for when the Senate Report - or a redacted part of it - is finally released.
Yet, the Obama administration gave everyone who ordered, authorized or participated in torture "look forward, not backward" immunity (except, the whistleblower John Kiriakou, who helped expose torture and got a 30 month prison sentence). And, the Obama administration, with great fanfare, ended and condemned the torture program. Why then is the CIA fighting tooth and nail to keep a defunct, ineffective program secret?
There are several possible answers to why the CIA is hell bent on keeping the Senate Report from public view. Pick your anti-transparency motivation:
(a) The Senate Report reveals that the CIA's torture program went beyond the morally repugnant tactics like waterboarding to include even more sadistic techniques like attempted drowning in a bath of ice water.
(b) The Senate Reports reveals that the CIA misled Congress about torture's effectiveness (the Senate Report finds conclusively that torture is NOT effective) and about the torture victims' alleged positions in terrorist networks (the Senate Report finds that the CIA made suspects out to have far more information than they actually had).
(c) If Senate Report is released, it opens the door for future congressional oversight on CIA programs, such as the drone assassination program, which is now the preferred way of "handling" terror suspects.
(d) All of the above.
Whatever the reason, despite the fact that the CIA has immunity and the program was supposedly extinguished years ago, the CIA is still determined to cover-up for torture and protect the perpetrators. The trickling out of information protects the CIA from another Abu Ghraib moment, instead spoon feeding the public each "clutch your pearls" moment from the Senate Report in a more digestible way.
Also falling into category of "classified leaks that won't be prosecuted" this week, take former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis. (He's known for shepherding the NSA through mass surveillance and retaliation against whistleblowers like Thomas Drake). Despite the fact that NSA begged The Washington Post not to name the countries whose entire communications content the NSA was collecting, citing of course, some supposedly grave threat to national security, and WaPo agreed to keep the secret, Inglis casually revealed the name of one of the countries - Iraq - to the L.A. Times. Inglis' disclosure exposes NSA's earlier lobbying for secrecy as motivated for a need to control information not to protect national security.
"Leaks" like the ones this week undermine the entire classification system by making it it seems that the intelligence community's concern is less about harm to national security if the public knows about mass surveillance and torture, and more about harm to the intelligence community's reputation and ability to control the public discourse.
Moreover, the "approved" leaks demonstrate the injustice and hypocrisy in the Obama administration's unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers.
There are legitimate national security secrets, but they do not include cover-ups for illegal and unconstitutional practices like torture and mass surveillance.