Silence of the asses

Max Boot comments on the media’s silence over the criminal leak of the highly classified information reported in the New York Times NSA story: “‘Plame platoon’ is AWOL on new leaks.” Referring to the string of intelligence leaks that seem to culminate in the NSA story, Boot writes:

Most of these are highly classified programs whose revelation could provide real aid to our enemies — far more aid than revealing the name of a CIA officer who worked more or less openly at Langley, Va. We don’t know what damage the latest leaks may have done, but we do know that past leaks about U.S. successes in tracking cellphones led Al Qaeda leaders to shun those devices.

So I eagerly await the righteous indignation from the Plame Platoon about the spilling of secrets in wartime and its impassioned calls for an independent counsel to prosecute the leakers. And wait…And wait…

I suspect it’ll be a long wait because the rule of thumb seems to be that although it’s treasonous for pro-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass an administration critic, it’s a public service for anti-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass the administration. The determination of which secrets are OK to reveal is, of course, to be made not by officials charged with protecting our nation but by journalists charged with selling newspapers.

The New York Times sought to quell such concerns by noting in its big article on the NSA that “some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.” Forgive me if I’m not reassured by the implication that other information that might be useful to terrorists had not been omitted.

Boot does not point out that, unlike the leak of Plame’s position and relationship to Joe Wilson, the leak of the information regarding the NSA eavesdropping program is flagrantly illegal.

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