Espionage And Leaks... And Presidents Who Cannot Or Will Not Tell The Difference

Leak stopper

With the laying of charges of espionage against Edward Snowden, Barack Obama joins Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush in the exclusive group of presidents who have used the Espionage Act of 1917 as a club with which to beat leakers of information that embarrassed their administrations. Kevin Gosztola of FDL, who actually can tell the difference between espionage and leaks, explores the likely consequences if this course of action... so far used by Obama eight times, more often than by all other presidents combined... becomes common practice.

Leak stopper

Gosztola's article is long and thought-provoking, and I will not attempt to summarize it. If you give a damn about whether the American press and media are able to operate to the advantage of an open and democratic American government and a passionately motivated American people, you need to read the whole thing. If you don't, and if Obama succeeds where the other above-named presidents failed in establishing espionage charges as a default brickbat against leakers, you may be literally asking for the consequences Gosztola outlines, quoting Jonathan Alter's words from the latter's book The Promise:

Obama had one pet peeve that could make him lose his cool. It was a common source of anger for presidents: leaks. Complaints about loose lips became a constant theme of Obama’s early presidency. At his first Cabinet meeting he made a point of saying that he didn’t want to see his Cabinet “litigating” policy through the New York Times and the Washington Post. At a Blair House retreat for the Cabinet and senior staff at the end of July he devoted about a quarter of his comments to urging his people to keeping their disagreements within the family: “We should be having these debates on the inside, not the outside.” And during his twenty hours of deliberations over Afghanistan in the fall, he returned repeatedly to the theme. Naturally in Washington nearly every time he got upset about leaks it leaked.

For all his claims that he didn’t want yes-men around him, no one on his staff was brave enough to tell the president that obsessing over leaks was a colossal waste of time. (Aides should have recognized that the age-old problem in Washington isn’t managing leaks, but managing the president’s fury over them.) But it wouldn’t have mattered: leaks offended Obama’s sense of discipline and reminded him of everything he disliked about the capital. He was fearsome on the subject, which seemed to bring out his controlling nature to an even greater degree than usual...

I am increasingly convinced, notwithstanding all of Obama's mitigating virtues, that his essence is the stuff of which totalitarian leaders are made. He needs to be watched closely, and prevented to the extent possible by the counterbalance of other branches of our government from enforcing an un-American discipline on the world of American journalism. Our nation's survival as a free and open society may depend on it.

Journalism, including the release and publication of leaks, is not espionage: it is an essential element in the ongoing battle against the actions of controlling presidents and their governments. It must never be shut down or chilled out of existence by threats, applied through archaic laws, to the lives and freedoms of journalists.