Obama tougher than George W. Bush in prosecuting disclosures of government activities

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Sat Jun-12-10 07:14 PM
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Obama tougher than George W. Bush in prosecuting disclosures of government activities

Obama is already toughest president on leaks
More prosecutions sought in 17 months than any previous administration
By Scott Shane
New York Times
June 12, 2010

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

As secret programs proliferated after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, were outspoken in denouncing press disclosures about the C.I.A.�s secret prisons and brutal interrogation techniques, and the security agency�s eavesdropping inside the United States without warrants.

Though the inquiries began under President Bush, it has fallen to Mr. Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to prosecute. They have shown no hesitation, even though Mr. Drake is not accused of disclosing the N.S.A.�s most contentious program, that of eavesdropping without warrants.

Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, who has long tracked the uneasy commerce in secrets between government officials and the press, said Mr. Drake might have fallen afoul of a bipartisan sense in recent years that leaks have gotten out of hand and need to be deterred. By several accounts, Mr. Obama has been outraged by some leaks, too.

Though he is charged under the Espionage Act, Mr. Drake appears to be a classic whistle-blower whose goal was to strengthen the N.S.A.�s ability to catch terrorists, not undermine it. His alleged revelations to Ms. Gorman focused not on the highly secret intelligence the security agency gathers but on what he viewed as its mistaken decisions on costly technology programs called Trailblazer, Turbulence and ThinThread.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that defends whistle-blowers, said the Espionage Act, written in 1917 for the pursuit of spies, should not be used to punish those who expose government missteps. �What gets lost in the calculus is that there�s a huge public interest in the disclosure of waste, fraud and abuse,� Ms. Radack said. �Hiding it behind alleged classification is not acceptable.�

Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of �Necessary Secrets,� a book proposing criminal penalties not just for leakers but for journalists who print classified material, said that whatever his intentions, Mr. Drake must be punished.

�The system is plagued by leaks,� said Mr. Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative research organization. �When you catch someone, you should make an example of them.�

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37653773/ns/politics-the_new_york_times

It should be noted that the government stamps virtually every document involving government spying as classified, especially those that might reveal illegal and criminal government activity. They hide and classify their activities in the name of "national security". It's clear that any government "whistle blowers" who expose such activities will be prosecuted to the fullest extent by this administration. BBI