A National Debut and the Culture of Leaking

Ned Lamont made his first national Sunday show appearance this week at Fox. While it was not the implosion that I suspected might come, it wasn't a great day either.

There were lots of generalizations and some stammering but no home runs, neither any serious faux pas. But there was some five-year old read-meat on the Patriot Act:

LAMONT: Look, when it comes to the Patriot Act, again, I think it ought to be tightly drawn to respect our civil liberties but also give the American intelligence community all the tools they need to fight the war on terror. And I think it's a careful balance we have to have there.

WALLACE: Is there any specific measure in the Patriot Act that's in there now that you would like to see taken out?

LAMONT: Well, certainly, there's been an awful lot of talk about going after librarians and seeing what books that, you know, Chris Wallace's kids are taking out and not taking out. That seemed to be casting a net a little too wide, that jeopardizes some of our liberties, sure.

Perhaps the suit isn't as empty as I thought, though were I voting in Connecticut I'd need to see a whole lot more and a whole lot better.

The most interesting part of the morning I thought came in the panel discussion about the foiled airline plot from mid-week. Specifically, this little tidbit:

KRISTOL: Well, it tells us that Al Qaida is alive and hopefully not too well, but alive enough to plan a major plot, alive in Pakistan, and alive, unfortunately, in some of the Muslim areas around London and in Great Britain. And that's worrisome, obviously, for the future.

The good news is the British intelligence seems to have been on top of it. We seem to have cooperated with them ably. We managed not to leak the story, which is awfully good.
Mike Chertoff told me before the show that on Sunday he came in a week ago Sunday to prepare for the homeland security, you know, special meeting, cabinet meeting, cabinet-level meeting, and he typed up his notes for the meeting on his own classified computer because they didn't want to let any of the assistants even know.

No one except at the very highest level knew. And it's important to do that, because if foreign intelligence agencies are going to cooperate with us, they need to be confident that we're not going to leak.

And I give the Bush administration a lot of credit for managing to prevent the leaks.

WALLACE: For keeping a secret? Boy, that's...

KRISTOL: Well, but look. Look, it hasn't been so easy in the past.

WALLACE: No, I understand.

KRISTOL: And I think the leaks have done damage in the past.

Interesting observation, especially in light of this court ruling from Wednesday of last week:


The federal government may prosecute private citizens who illegally receive and retransmit classified information, held federal district court Judge T.S. Ellis III yesterday in United States v. Rosen. Judge Ellis denied a motion to dismiss filed by Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who are being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for obtaining classified information and communicating it to third parties, including members of the media. According to Judge Ellis:

both common sense and the relevant precedent point persuasively to the conclusion that the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense.

Coupled with this report from a few weeks ago, alot of folks should be getting nervous:

A federal grand jury in Alexandria is investigating unauthorized leaks of classified information and has issued a subpoena to a fired National Security Agency officer who has acknowledged talking with journalists about the agency's warrantless surveillance program, according to documents released yesterday.

The 23-member grand jury is "conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving unauthorized disclosure of classified information" under the Espionage Act and other statutes, according to a document accompanying the subpoena.

The demand for testimony from former NSA officer Russell Tice provides a sign of the Justice Department's aggressiveness in pursuing the leak investigation, which follows a series of controversial news reports on classified programs. It also marks the latest potential use of the espionage statute to combat such leaks.

And rightfully so.