I mean why bother if people go around leaking almost everything to the press. But … in an interesting development that could … just could … lead to some examination of this loathsome behavior … according to the AP: House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.
How impolite of Hoekstra not playing ball with the discrete charms of the liberal media bourgoisie. He wants people to abide by the law – imagine that. Well, we shall see what we shall see. The New York Times … you will be shocked to learn … has not commented. Why would they? They know best.
A lot of stuff is marked top secret that is merely ho-hum and boring. However, common sense use to underpin the behavior of those in the loop. That simply is no longer the case. Democrats especially can no longer seem to discern between important secrets and those of lesser value.
oh god, i don’t know if i can take another dem underling being feted on the morning shows, book deals and oprah in the wings. just once i would love one of these egocentric losers to get 10 years in jail. maybe folks would start to take oaths seriously again.
“… has suspended a Democratic staff member”
These are the same Democrats that want us to believe that they’re serious about national security? … leaking classified information to the TSM (Terrorist Supporting Media)? Yeah, sure … I’d vote for a Democrat … when people in hell start getting ice water. Don’t the American people realize that the TSM and the Democrats are the enemy within? Sigh … if not, we’re doomed.
Roger, aren’t your picking the wrong fight? Yes, the NIE was leaked, but — for someone who professes to care about liberated Iraqis — shouldn’t you be more concerned that the country has imploded to such an extent that, according to today’s WaPo, “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office has instructed the country’s health ministry to stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations…”
That something more than “loathsome,” isn’t it?
Memo to Mrbores. When you receive a security clearance you agree to abide by the laws. They do not allow for you to decide on your own whether something is validly secret or not. If you do not abide by the laws you are subject to jail terms and validly so.
As to being bothered by implosion in Iraq, are you saying that we should all be single-threaded so that we can only care about one item at a time? Nothing said on the current subject means that any of us are not concerned about implosion in Iraq. We are just saying that we are very concerned that a member of the House intelligence staff should take it upon himself to pass on classified information to people who were not cleared for it and do not demonstrate a “need to know” the information. That is almost to the same level as passing military secrets to the enemy directly except in this case they used a cut-out to get the information to the enemy. He should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. So should Sandy Berger IMNSHO but I don’t know if we can go back and revisit that determination; in fact given the position that Sandy Berger held in the Clinton administration he should be prosecuted even more so that this schnook.
Oh, one more thing for David Thomson. Regardless of whether something is classified higher than it should be, you still have to deal with the classification it has unless you have the power to reclassify it or can get someone who does have that authority reclassify it. Until that happens you have to work as if it were validly the security classification it has. And whether it is a copy or an original it still has that same classification. Being a copy makes no difference at all when it comes to classified documents.
In 1983 .. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan’s foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts.
Pardon my skepticism, but has anyone seen any actual evidence that this staffer is the one who leaked, other than that he received it a couple of days before it was published? Any reason to think it was him rather than one of the Congressmen he worked for, or any of the other hundreds of people who had access to the memo?
I hope some evidence does come out soon; otherwise this is looking like an extremely desperate move by the Republicans. I want to believe that the Republicans will hold on in the the House and Senate, but moves like this are making me doubt it.
mrbones:
The implosion in Iraq? A couple of things: Iraq has been imploding for decades now and no one cared, and the issue here is some Democrat staffer leaking classified information to help win an election.
Now I know that Democrats are counting on their compadres in Iraq to make sure and keep the murder and mayhem as high as possible to help them win the upcoming election here, so I guess it should not surprise me that they would break the law as well.