Reply #53: White House Steps Up Effort to Halt Flow of Secrets

[Clara T]

March 06, 2006 09:12 PM ET
White House steps up effort to halt flow of secrets

The administration of President George W. Bush is mounting an unprecedented effort to crack down on leaks of government secrets, even as it is vastly expanding the range of information deemed too sensitive to share with the public.

That twin effort has raised fears that the White House may succeed in shutting off the flow of such information by threatening to jail those who leak secrets and those who receive them.

The issue has come to a head in the government's efforts to prosecute two pro-Israeli lobbyists for receiving classified information from a Pentagon official. Larry Franklin, the official, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in January, and the lobbyists – Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – are to go on trial next month.

Many see the case, which relies on a novel interpretation of a 90-year-old espionage law, as a test of whether the administration can exercise new powers to shut off leaks that have been severely embarrassing to the White House. In particular, the Justice Department is aggressively trying to identify the sources for two explosive news stories: the existence of secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons in eastern Europe, and the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programme.

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp?feed=FT&Date=20060306&ID=5559997