Intelligence leakers + liberal MSM = endangering our intelligence operations and the lives of agents
It’s an old story.
The MSM considers itself to be immune from prosecution for publishing intelligence information, even if it could harm this country and its operatives.
Actually, especially if it could harm the policies of the United States under President Donald Trump.
So we have things like this:
…[T]he Times has apparently made it the newspaper’s mission to make the [CIA’s] work much more difficult and far more dangerous by publicly identifying the man in charge of its covert operations in the Persian country [Iran]. The paper’s rationale? The report’s authors claimed that because the newspaper already outed D’Andrea in 2015 as the official in charge of a CIA drone program, ignoring desperate pleas from the CIA at the time to keep his name secret in order to protect both the agent and overall national security, it was kosher to out him as the agency’s new Iran chief in 2017…
…[T]he paper’s real reason for outing D’Andrea, who was depicted as a character known only as “The Wolf” in the film “Zero Dark Thirty,” is that he’s an Iran hawk likely to oppose the previous administration’s attempts to normalize the nation by giving it billions of dollars, trading it terrorists for hostages, and blessing its nuclear program.
When the Times and the WaPo published the Pentagon Papers back in 1971, a suit was brought about whether this was a violation of the Espionage Act. The case was decided by the Supreme Court in favor of the Times:
The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did protect the right of the New York Times to print the materials…
In its decision, the court first established the legal question with the use of precedents. It first stated that “Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity”. The purpose of this statement was to make the presence of the inherent conflict between the Government’s efforts and the First Amendment clear. The decision then stated that the government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint”. This reinforced the idea that it was the Nixon Administration’s responsibility to show sufficient evidence that the newspapers’ actions would cause a “grave and irreparable” danger.
In his opinion, Justice Hugo Black wrote the following:
In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. … [W]e are asked to hold that … the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws … abridging freedom of the press in the name of ‘national security.’ … To find that the President has ‘inherent power’ to halt the publication of news … would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make ‘secure.’ … The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security .
I see this as effectively placing no restrictions on the press at all, making the press sovereign and allowing it to expose any confidential information it wishes, as long as it can find a willing informant. Surely the Founders could not have meant that to happen, either.
I have previously written several posts on the Pentagon Papers, and I direct your attention to this one. Here’s a quote from this article:
Journalist Edward Jay Epstein has shown that in crucial respects, the Times coverage was at odds with what the documents actually said. The lead of the Times story was that in 1964 the Johnson administration reached a consensus to bomb North Vietnam at a time when the president was publicly saying that he would not bomb the north. In fact, the Pentagon papers actually said that, in 1964, the White House had rejected the idea of bombing the north. The Times went on to assert that American forces had deliberately provoked the alleged attacks on its ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify a congressional resolution supporting our war efforts. In fact, the Pentagon papers said the opposite: there was no evidence that we had provoked whatever attacks may have occurred.
In short, a key newspaper said that politicians had manipulated us into a war by means of deception. This claim, wrong as it was, was part of a chain of reporting and editorializing that helped convince upper-middle-class Americans that the government could not be trusted.
I repeat: is there any limit to the power of the press, to lie, distort, and advance its own agenda, all in the name of a protected freedom of the press? And what about the leakers? Is the press able to protect them from prosecution, as well, by keeping their identities secret?
“is there any limit to the power of the press, to lie, distort, and advance its own agenda, all in the name of a protected freedom of the press?
There is no substitute for patriotic self-limitation. No substitute for reportage that seeks to objectively inform, rather than deceive.
Since self-limitation and objectivity are nearly extinct sentiments, its absence gives rise to an examination of today’s press and its fidelity to its raison d’etre.
In 1971, “The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information.”
That is no longer the question before the court. Which is revealed when the reality of today’s ‘agenda journalism’ is compared to Justice Hugo Black’s reasoning; “In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”
The press do NOT serve the governed. They seek to control the governed through falsity. They have betrayed that essential role in our republic.
This is demonstrated by their continual lying, ignoring, obfuscating and distorting in their reportage.
We no longer have a free press, it died decades ago. And there is no Constitutional protection for an incessant campaign of propaganda that seeks to erase the very Constitution it uses as a shield against consequence.
They embrace treason and call it patriotism.
I just typed out five paragraphs saying the same thing Neo said in the last paragraph and last sentence. The press, “They embrace treason and call it patriotism.”
I think lubricant is being poured on the slippery slide to taking the United States somewhere I don’t want to go.
I deleted my five and went with Neo’s last paragraph, it says it well.
There is a popular saying that the Founders did not intend for the Constitution to be a suicide pact. It seems reasonable that they also did not mean for it to shield lawlessness. But, who is an ordinary citizen to question the wisdom of SCOTUS?
I’m not going to disagree with you that the press can do damage to the US or people.
But I’d argue that anyone with information can still damage us without the press. It’s far easier than terrorism, no bombs have to be left, just paper. Just messages.
In fact, a foreign country would publish the information. In order to block people from accessing information made available in other countries we would have to impose censorship blocks like China uses.
A whole industry would pop up outside the country of what the US government doesn’t want you to see. Such as WikiLeaks has done. Our enemies would probably run their own little news service about it.
Maybe my point is, whatever you do it ultimately won’t achieve your objective, unless your objective just keep items from being published here in the US.
Am I wrong?
The SCOTUS decision was 6-3.
The six were Black, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White and Thurgood Marshall.
The three were Chief Justice Burger, Harlan and Blackmun.
Harlan, a conservative, was dying of cancer at the time. Blackmun, just appointed by Nixon, later became a flaming lib.
Of the six, only Stewart was “centrist”. The others were more or less “liberal”, Constitutionally speaking.
The deck was stacked in favor of the NY Times, and we suffer the consequences.
groundhog,
No, you’re not wrong, which is why I asserted there to be no substitute for self-censorship motivated by patriotism. When a media outlet places an ideological agenda before national security it has revealed itself to be traitorous, which logically forfeits 1st amendment protections. As one cannot claim protections that extend from what one seeks to erase.
These are not American journalists, they are ‘progressive’ propagandists. That many are too stupid to understand that their good intentions leads to tyranny does not absolve them from their complicity.
Any institution with power needs SOME form of “checks and balances” against the misuse of that power.
The Framers gave special protections to The Press (and also to Religion) when they formalized our Constitution, apparently assuming that “good sense” and the opprobrium of The People would be sufficient to curb any excesses in those institutions.
But now we see how our nation’s enemies (and anymore I DO consider the political Left to be deliberately hostile to our citizens, our Republic, and our way-of-life) gleefully exploit those protections to undermine common sense, as well as the common weal.
I fear we’re nearing the point where we either adopt the tactics of the Left (and cease being a tolerant, open, and liberal society), or we double-down on Reason, Civility, and Rule-Of-Law, and watch our country be destroyed by lawfare and Alinsky-tactics.
Either way – we won’t be the USA envisioned by Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, et. al. Forget that silly notion of a “shining city on the hill”. Such sentimental bilge has no place in the New World of Global Equals.
The “Pentagon Papers” were not a good use of the attempt to punish leakers of secrets. First it was a history, not an operational document. FDR chose not to prosecute the Chicago Tribune for one absolute example of treason and one lesser example. The most serious was the breaking of the Japanese code. The Trib referred to it in the story about the battle of Midway. The lesser example was the publishing on “Rainbow Five” the war plan which it published before Pearl Harbor. The latter was probably a leak of the type we see now.
Roosevelt believed that the Japanese did not read the Tribune and chose to let it alone.
The Times has a history of dishonest reporting by Walter Duranty during the Ukraine famine created by Stalin. Their more recent treason involved exposing the SWIFT program which allowed terrorist funding to change methods of transmitting funds.
They, of course, joined the charge after the fake outing of Valerie Plame in hopes of harassing Bush and Cheney.
Mike K:
Classified is classified. Letting it out ain’t legal. In my sense, though not that of 1971 SCOTUS, which I attempted to show was playing with a lib-stacked deck.
The press do NOT serve the governed. They seek to control the governed through falsity.
They have the means and unearned credibility to manipulate perception in order to realize a preferred reality. They are an expert system, no different than, for example, scientists, who also enjoy a god-like status in our post-intellectual society.
If I were writing a political thriller, I would put a mole in the top levels of a prominent newspaper who would solicit classified information from naive whistleblowers and publish it “for the sake of the people’s right to know” — all the while being aware that the real audience was his foreign handlers.
“Treason for DUMMIES” —
The fedral courts, the msm, and Hollywood. Enemies of the republic, if we can keeep it.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/01/this-isnt-watergate-and-intel-leakers-arent-deep-throat-theyre-traitors/
It wasn’t that long ago I joined the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Corps. (Okay, it was more than 16 years ago, but the years have flown by.) I signed paperwork and was told, in no uncertain terms, that if I leaked, stole, or even handled sensitive information incorrectly, the best thing that would happen is I would lose my job. The worst was that I would go to jail for a long time. Real, live military prison. “Ten years,” they told me, “for each offense.”
So it is with some gobsmacking bewilderment that I have lived through the last 16 years. I have worked on a few counterintelligence (CI) investigations, and they really are a data management exercise. Is the data classified? Was it released? Were the proper procedures followed before the release? If the answers are “Yes, yes, no,” then you have a crime. See? Easy.
Note at no point is there a question “Did the suspect intend to release the information to the public?” or “Is the person a raving Communist or ISIS fanatic?” Intent is not relevant.
If intent is not relevant, then something has changed in how we perceive the improper handling and deliberate leaking of classified information, because the leaking and spying has continued, but the punishments are going from light, to nonexistent, to outright praise.
* * *
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 along with other charges of theft and conspiracy, carrying a total maximum sentence of 115 years. Due to governmental misconduct and illegal evidence gathering, and the defense by Leonard Boudin and Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, Judge Byrne dismissed all charges against Ellsberg on May 11, 1973.
…Ellsberg was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 2006.
The NYT (and the MSM) and many, many others (not just on the Left) have defined “patriotism” as: removing President Trump from office.
And any actions or words that may accomplish this are therefore, “patriotic”.
And so they will permit themselves—they will fall over themselves—to do anything and everything in pursuit of this “patriotic” (and therefore uber-moral) goal.
They will use lies and innuendo to attack him, his family and his supporters.
They will compromise national security to embarrass him.
They will enable any and every government department, at any level, where they still have any control, to “resist” and sabotage the president’s policies.
No price is too great to pay to get rid of Trump.
And if they have to destroy the country and its social fabric, then so be it.
“Patriotism”.
Doesn’t Julian Assange consider what he’s doing free speech/ a kind of journalism?
That’s what our current press has become: the anti-Trump Wikileaks. A Ben Rhodes type “Blobileaks”.
That’s not a compliment.
“is there any limit to the power of the press, to lie, distort, and advance its own agenda, all in the name of a protected freedom of the press?” – Neo
I share the frustration and concern, but not sure how you propose to solve this issue.
Some special rules that we don’t already have?
If so, who decides and manages it – another government oversight?
And when the dems have power, will we find their judgement on such things more trustworthy?
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“And what about the leakers? Is the press able to protect them from prosecution, as well, by keeping their identities secret?”
Be careful what we wish for, as we may well get it.
Yes, the leakers themselves SHOULD be found, and made accountable for their actions.
We may well find that they come from rather close to our POTUS.
What about the leaks (lies or otherwise) from trump and the WH itself, to “conservative” media? Should those also be subject to all this?
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Not so anxious for “the press” in general being subject to prosecution.
Not being an expert on the current laws, is there really an absence of law covering this?
And, if not (or if we think we need to extend it), what are our limiting principles to ensure that someone we don’t like in power doesn’t abuse it?
Make it broad enough, and we could be going after the inforwars nutjob, and maybe rush and hannity might come under such scope (to say nothing of many on cnn, msnbc, etc).
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Anyway, I’d like to understand better what we have in place already before declaring that there are no limits to what the press can do, as I can certainly see all kinds of downside to a trump driven sloppy set of rules slapped in their stead. Even if trump would prove benign (doubtful), the dems certainly couldn’t be trusted.
Let’s not forget the Iranian radicals’ take-over of the US Embassy in Tehran back in 1979.
Those 6 Americans who managed to avoid being taken hostage, and were given refuge by the Canadians in Tehran, were almost outed by a Canadian Journalist and a couple of American journalists.
While the journalists may not have known who they were, the journalists did figure out that the total number of hostages taken did not match the number who worked at the US Embassy in Tehran. So, they were about to publish stories about those “who got away”!
In the minds of the journalists, the story was more important than the lives of any of the Americans, whether they were hostages or those who escaped.
It was only after Joe Clark (Canada’s Prime minster) and Jimmy Carter personally contacted the journalists and beg them to not publish anything that the stories were held off.
However, once the Canadian Embassy closed, and the 6 Americans made it to Switzerland (The CIA had prepared false identities and temporary homes for the 6 to live as alter egos in the US until the rest of the Hostages made it home safely) the Canadian journalist went ahead and published his story – not caring it the Iranians would retaliate against those remaining hostage.
So, in the minds of journalists “selling stories” trumps other people’s lives most of the time.
Is it any wonder that many Americans do not hold a favorable view of journalists?