There are many ways to profit. Some like money. Some like power. Others like to feel that they’ve done something important. I’ve heard it said that money is the root of all evil. You can buy a lot of evil with money but the real root of evil is pride of self.

In order to do something we need motivation, profit from that particular enterprise. The lack of a money transfer isn’t proof of a lack of profit.

When someone with a clearance takes information that they have been entrusted with and releases it into unauthorized channels he is stealing. Probably, he (or she) has seen that condor movie and sees himself as the heroic revealer of government evildoers. Or, maybe he sees himself as an important whistleblower. Whatever they see themselves as they are just thieves. And the agencies that trade in stolen goods are just fences. There isn’t any nobility in trading in the merchandize of thieves.

There are some undeniable truths about those that abuse the trust of a clearance:
1.) They know they are doing something illegal.

2.) Their actions undo the good work done by the other 99.9% of their co-workers.

3.) They place their own pride above their integrity and the wellbeing of their Country.

These rights are not unlimited. I, you and the NYT can not legally publish copyrighted material (w/o permission). I, you and the NYT can not start riots with our speech. If the government leakers had given La Shawn the information about this program she would have had the same rights to put it on her website as the NYT had to publish it in their paper. If it is illegal for us ordinary joes to publish this stuff, it is illegal for the NYT.

I miss you!

Just as a refresher to the reader:

Top Secret (TS)
The highest level of classification of material. Such material would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if publicly available.

Secret
Such material would cause “serious damage” to national security if publicly available.

Confidential
Such material would cause “damage” or be “prejudicial” to national security if publicly available.

Restricted
Such material would cause “undesirable” effects if publicly available. Some countries do not have such a classification.

Unclassified
Technically not a classification level, but is used for government documents that do not have a classification listed above. Such documents can be viewed by those without security clearance.
*from wikipedia

That word “grave” means exactly what you would think. Someone will in all probability die.

That’s because you’re NOT a normal blogger..

Thanks, Fred. – Admin

Watch for that one, it is the pet phrase of the bigoted.

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I think the reason they won’t be tried is because this administration respects the freedom of the press. Any move against the paper would be reported as censorship or worse, plus, we don’t need any gov’t officials advocating the take-over of any newspaper or news organization a la Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. State sponsored media could result with the wrong person in office.

If the gov’t prosecutes, the NYTimes will squeal like a pig about it, so they have to decide if its worth the bad press. However, if this happens again, I don’t think the public will stand for it and action will be taken. God help us all.

Suppose that during WWII Roosevelt decided to make a run to liberate the internees (he knew the details, but refused to act) from concentration capms such as Dachau, would these same papers have printed the plans under the philosophy of “screw the Jews, our readers have the right to know”?

This would not have been treason. A few more incinerated Jews would not have had any much effect on the progress of the war. In fact, as Roosevelt decided, it would have been a military distraction.

In fact, Roosevelt had fairly good intelligence about the plight of the Jews. So did the NYT and the WSJ and probably the LATimes, but they all kept mum and let them burn. Roosevelt was even confronted with the “Sophie’s Choice” of bombing the concentration camps to destroy the internees and the ovens and system for perpetuating the atrocity and he looked the other way: all without any newspaper intervening with the right of the people to know.

The Bush administration burrows into the minutia of terrorists hiding money and all of a sudden the newspapers decide this is so important that people need to know that the earth is about to be thrown off its axis.

While the First Amendment was written to protect political speech, it is highly questionable if it was ever meant to anoint unelected, irresponsible journalists with immunity from impeding the orderly (if secret) progress of the public interest.

I recoil at the “treason” argument; it is as far off center as the reporting. I can only ask the NYT, et al. to tell us what side they are on. If they say:”the truth” it is a lame and cliched answer.

If “the truth” is the goal, they would report that Al Franken is a no-talent loser, Helen Thomas is ugly and senile, most of their advertisers are charlatans, social security is busting the budget and will sink the next generation, global warming is conjecture at best, journalists are not objective, money talks and Hitler was right (along with Machiavelli) about “the big lie.”

Von Clausewitz is credited with saying “war is diplomacy by other means.” Well, the NYT, et al. have shown that journalism is “politics by other means.”

The Times should change its motto from the highly inaccurate “All The News That’s Fit to Print” to the more honest “All the news that Howard Dean says to print.”

Exquisite response from an exquisite thinker!

SteveDinMD: That’s very interesting. I’m impressed, but perhaps the rest of the world lacks your omniscience. Simply put, if it weren’t news, the Times wouldn’t have printed it, and the story wouldn’t have generated such controversy. Denying the damage by arguing that there was, in effect, no disclosure because it is widely known that “…the Government, err, tracks stuff…” and sources such as this are consequently foreseeable by the enemy betrays either the ignorance or the disingenuousness of the person making the argument.

Remember; back in 1942 it was widely assumed that governments regularly attempted cryptanalysis against their enemies’ cipher systems. Information pertaining to the success, or failure, or specific targets of such attempts was extremely damaging to disclose. The same holds precisely true in this case.

I dont see this as any type of treason or espionage whatsoever. The US tracking the banking records of suspected terrorists? I kinda figured this anyway, they’ve been doing this for years.

Not news to me. I’m sure the gov’t tracks all kinds of things about us we have no idea about, I’m concerned with what they do with the info.

Has the US not been tracking terrorist activity for years?

I dont like to give the terrorists credit, but I’m pretty sure that they are smart enough to know that the government is tracking them.

Again, the hypocrisy…conservative leaning Wall Street Journal prints the same things, yet there is no response.

When will those in power come to terms with what actually caused caused those attacks on 9/11?

Determined terrorists helped by apathetic law enforcement.