Security Leakers Aren't Really Unknown!

Ordered Liberty » Latest in Leak Farce: the ‘Special Counsel’ Folly

Thanks to Andrew McCarthy.

You don’t need a special prosecutor to know who talked to the Times. All you need to do is read the two stories — the first on Obama’s assassination list and the follow-up on cyber-warfare. The Times tells you who its sources are. At the very beginning of the 6300-word kill-list epic, it says: “In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of [Obama's] current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.” The account goes on to quote, for example, former White House chief-of-staff Bill Daley, who not only confirms the existence of a kill-list but describes the considerations behind adding names to it. Current and former national security officials are quoted, in many instances by name (e.g., national security adviser Thomas Donilon and former national intelligence director Dennis Blair). And when names are not given, the Times quotes, for example, “one participant” in the approximately weekly meetings — videoconferences run by the Pentagon but involving national security officials across the administration — who describes some of the criteria for adding or removing terrorists from the kill-list.

Furthermore, at the very beginning of the cyber-war article, the Times describes “a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room” in which the president, vice-president and CIA director deliberated over whether the “Stuxnet” worm that had so vexed Iran’s nuclear efforts had been compromised. The report elaborates: “‘Should we shut this thing down?’ Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.” There is no mystery here. The report goes on to say that current and former American officials involved in the program provided information to the Times — and that “none would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified.” In other words, they knew full well that they were disclosing information that should not be disclosed and they demanded the cover of anonymity before doing so (and the Times, for its part, is protecting them because the paper, too, knows that what is being published should never have been shared with its reporters).