Many moons ago, I had to get a civilian "top secret" security clearance so I could work on a military base (nothing too exciting -- about 95% of it was shit you could have found in your local library). Every piece of paper I signed had language telling me that if I told anyone what I saw, or even accidentally let slip what I saw, I would be cast into the firey depths of pound-me-in-the-ass federal prison for ten years.

My motives or feelings about the secured materials was wholly beside the point. If I agreed to keep them secret and then exposed them -- accidentally or on purpose -- then I was guilty of a federal crime. As was whoever leaked this material. Their motives don't matter, only their actions. They have violated federal law (as did the Plame leakers), and should be prosecuted.

This "whistleblower" shit has got to stop -- the NSA and CIA aren't like fucking Enron.

Lock them up?

To hell with that!

Drag them out in the street and shoot them. Burn their bodie. Rip down their dwellings and smash all their belongings

Catch their damn pets and stick them on a skewer and then slow roast them over an open flame and then eat their roasted carcasses for breakfast!

Uhm.....

I got a little carried away, there.

Actually locking them up would be sufficient. Taht'll do just fine in fact. That'll do.

He Is Risen.

(James Risen, that is.)

"...the NSA and CIA aren't like fucking Enron."

You got that right. Enron will get all playful and creative with you, and NSA and CIA just like of lie there.

LOCK THEM UP, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AND FOR AS LONG AS POSSIBLE.

Then please throw away the key.

This is such a weak and unconvincing argument by the the traitor Risen.
Can you imagine how long ago he would have been locked up during WWII for even screwing around with intel stuff he has been messing with?
And now that it is turning out that one of his main sources (hiw only source?) is a paranoid wack job, I think this newest non-scandal will blow up in the faces of the wiley-coyote lefies yet again.

This is such a weak and unconvincing argument by the the traitor Risen. Can you imagine how long ago he would have been locked up during WWII for even screwing around with intel stuff he has been messing with?

Locked up? He would've been hanging from the end of a rope, or he would've been used for target practice.

"we cannot have every single fucking jackass with a security classification deciding according to the whims of his own conscience whether or not he will abide by the national security laws, as well as the guarantees made to his employer that he signed of his own free will."

Hear! Hear!

Decades ago I remember a Stuart Alsop commentary in Newsweek (back when it was a real newsmagazine) about dealing with the Soviets. It described their "Hottentot mentality" (work with me, this is worth the buildup) in negotiating and posturing.

The phrase came from an anthropologist who was interviewing Hottentot tribesmen in an effort to understand their motivation for the tribal tradition of wife stealing. He asked one tribesman what he thought of the practice, and the man said he liked it because stealing other men's wives was "very, very good."

The anthropologist responded by saying, "Well, put yourself in the other man's position. How would you feel if the other man came and stole your wife?" Without missing a beat the tribesman responded, "Oh, that would be very, very bad!"

Risen and the NYT display the same primitive instincts with their "Leaks that favor our political agenda, Good! Leaks that don't, Bad!" bullshit.

The tragedy and outrage is that they are doing this with obviously sensitive national security information! This f*cking organization needs to be humbled, now that they've spilled the beans. I want to see DoJ types breathing down Risen's neck, and putting a blowtorch up Pinch's ass, without further delay. Someone really should be prosecuted for this. It's already completely out of hand.

If I may, this course of action would indeed be "very, very good" for the USA. I don't give a rat’s ass if it would be "very, very bad" for those whose definition of patriotism is treason in any sensible person's book.

From Just One Minute:

"I don't want the Times deciding, in wartime, just what information I "deserve to have", thank you very much - they are not elected, they are not accountable, and frankly, I do not trust their politics. ....... how about if the purveyors of classifed info, when troubled by their consciences, take their troubles to a Congressional oversight committee rather than the NY Times?

As an added bonus, that would actually comply with the legal requirements of the Federal whistleblower act as it relates to the intelligence community." (emphasis added)http://justoneminute.typepad.com/

In other words, not only do the 'whistleblowers' break the law, but they has an alternative if they were actually concerned instead being partisan politcal hack criminals who got in bed with some other partisan political hack criminals at the nyt.

Don't bother with a trial, let's just use the rendition procedures initiated by Clinton and send them all over Uzbekistan, and among other things we'll find out whether Soros et al and/or Iran Syria et al greased their wheels to 'speak out'. Although the nyt needs no financial incentive to try to destroy America, it would nice to make sure they're not formally allied with our openly declared enemies.

Even though Saddam has been removed the axis of evil still has 3 members - Iran, North Korea and the nyt.

Interesting that WWII should be brought up.

Prior to the D-day landing we had worked many deceptions on the Germans about where we would land. Patton was a decoy, fake armies were set up in North England, etc. Notwithstanding, the press was getting uncomfortably close to revealing it.

Eisenhower assembled the press corps and briefed them on the plans, then asked them not to print it.

Not a word was released prior to the landing.

Drag them out in the street and shoot them. Burn their bodie. Rip down their dwellings and smash all their belongings...

Pussy... I would rather see my family dead than live another day after this... Kill their kids, kill their wives, kill their parents and their parents' friends. Burn down the houses they live in and the stores they work in, kill people that owe them money.

I don't placate!

[Fuck... can't even spell my own gottdamn name]

"Snitches get stitches."

I wonder how Mr. Risen will be feeling about protecting his "whistleblowers" after he's celebrated his first anniversary in the slammer?

There is an honorable legal way to present your concerns about a classified operation within channels. If you have been granted access to such information, you have agreed to those rules, and furthermore, agreed that you are not entitled to decide for yourself what constitutes sensitive information. There is also a traitorous treasonous method for presenting your concerns to those above you. These leakers chose the method that entitles them to be shot, preferably in public

Such emotion here.

we cannot have every single fucking jackass with a security classification deciding according to the whims of his own conscience

Can one of worker bees here answer a question appearing on those other blogs: if the president authorizes transparently illegal actions, subordinates are required to blow the whistle, correct? Before you answer, subordinates could not use as a defense against prosecution the claim they refuse to leak illegal activities.

The "clean hands" and "public interest" defenses, on Risen's and the NYT's parts, go up in flames when you remember that they had the info and sat on it for a year.

Why? Not because they'd been asked to do so, but because it was politically opportune to print it when they did, right as the Patriot Act was ready for re-authorization.

It was the "Cause a stir among the rubes" gambit, because, when looked at on its face, the Patriot Act wasn't and isn't worth complaining about.

I'm not sure Risen broke any federal law in publishing the information, though any shielding of the actual perp would be a violation of law.

The Times has violated the (perhaps even more important) rule against combining cynicism with crass opportunism, adding a touch of demagoguery, simply to stir the political pot in support of their own agenda.

Public interest, my ass. Rat bastards.

I want to see all of the Risen/NYT supporters stand tall and accept responsibility for the next terrorists attack. If they survive the attack themselves then they owe the victims families a personal visit and apology, and then they should commit suicide in front of them to show they are serious. We now have hundreds of terrorists wandering around the country 'where abouts unknows' planning to kill everyone they can, including the idiot left wingers that are trying to protect them. Personally I hope a major attack occurs sooner, rather than later. Why put off getting rid of the left wing politicians, and the people will get rid of them when thousands get killed, if not by their hand, with their assistance.

I see more and more people are taking the senile idiots like Murtha to task lately. Maybe his handlers will get the idea he's a nut and put him back in his cage.

ebabblesaurous, egastrosaurous, whatever-
Strawman alert!
No one but crazed Dowd masterbators thinks that the "president authorized transparently illegal actions".
And even if he does, say, screw a mafia don's mistress who just happens to have connections to communist spies, or sends the IRS and FBI after his political opponents, there are legal means to air your problems with those illegal actions.
And it is not a matter of refusing to leak, as your stupid hypothetical would have it. If you are in a situation where you feel that you must speak, you do it through the proper offices. What you do NOT do is call up the nearest traitor with a notebook and spill.
Punk.

ergastularius

Hello.

"Can one of worker bees here answer a question appearing on those other blogs: if the president authorizes transparently illegal actions, subordinates are required to blow the whistle, correct? Before you answer, subordinates could not use as a defense against prosecution the claim they refuse to leak illegal activities."

That question's already been answered, but I'm guessing that the worker bee wasn't reading well enough. If a subordinate believes that they have been ordered to do something "transparently illegal" they are obliged not to follow that order. If they are again ordered to do so they have several options open to them, one of which is to report the alleged wrongdoing through the correct "whistleblower" channels. I imagine that if the President has ordered something illegal and an NSA employee took that information to, say, the offices to a Democratic Senator on the Intelligence Committee, it'd get investigated in a heartbeat.

See, that way the employee doesn't break the law also (weren't you taught that two wrongs don't make a right?) and, as a bonus, if it turns out that the employee's judgement was wrong and the order was'nt "transparently illegal", the classified program isn't blown and lots of people lives won't be put at risk.

I would imagine that some common sense and a little thought would have told you that, though.

It will be real trouble in the hive when the worker bees go on strike whats the queen bee to do? call in a few drones?

to, say, the offices to a Democratic Senator on the Intelligence Committee, it'd get investigated in a heartbeat.

I'd bet you this happened. We'll know doubt know soon enough.

In any case, the case history is well-devoloped about when leak sources deserve protection. This is from the 1st's ruling in the Miller case (397 F.3d 964, 2005):

Narrowly drawn limitations on the public's right to evidence, testimonial privileges apply "only where necessary to achieve [their] purpose," Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 403 (1976), and in this case the privilege's purpose is to promote dissemination of useful information.

No. This is precisely the kind of leak protected by law.

spuring plover..... can I have some of what you're smoking?

ergastularius... But then, in the Miller case, no classified information was leaked, was it?

For a bunch of yahoos who think of themselves as true "patriotic Americans," not many of you appear understand the difference between "outing" a covert agent...and those who worked with her or around her...and exposing illegal activities by an elected representative of the government, as in the CIA and G.W. Bush.

I've read Risen's book and I've posted a few excerpts; two of which tell us that the CIA handed over the plans for how to build a nuclear bomb to the fucking Iranians...oh, and this was after they had already identifed all of our covert agents in Iran.

The response to my postings: We could give a fuck.