Ever since the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA operative in July 2003, prominent Democrats have denounced that leak — often with some kind of rhetoric about the sanctity of classified information. But reverence for keeping such information secret is dangerous. And so is the claim that sometimes the government should put journalists in jail to ferret out leakers.
With the vice president’s former top aide Lewis Libby under indictment and Karl Rove still in the special counsel’s sights, the Bush administration is eager to go on the offensive about classified leaks. Loyal Republicans now claim higher moral ground as they decry the leak of classified information about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying that surfaced on the New York Times front page in mid-December.
“Thank goodness the Justice Department is investigating to find out who has been endangering our national security by leaking this information so that our enemies now have a greater sense of what our techniques are in going after terrorists,” the GOP’s Sen. Mitch McConnell said on national television as this year began. He was on message with a bogus assertion.
Whoever spilled the beans about the NSA’s domestic spying did not endanger U.S. national security any more than Daniel Ellsberg did when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press 35 years ago. In both cases, the leaks endangered official mendacity and served the interests of democratic accountability.
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