Friday, October 20, 2006
I owe the CIA an apology
All along, I assumed that the leak to the New York Times of the summary findings of the National Intelligence Estimate was just another chapter in the permanent bureaucracy's continuing war against the Bush administration's foreign policy. After all, I assumed, why would a Democratic operative be so stupid as to work directly with the New York Times on such a story? It's an election year, and the Democrats are struggling to portray themselves as trustworthy on matters of national security. Nothing would look worse than a calculated leak of intelligence findings that -- while doing damage to the president politically -- would give hope and comfort to the enemy.
Silly me.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds, who writes "Patrick Fitzgerald, call your office."
13 Comments:
By 
D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri Oct 20, 12:36:00 AM:
Howell Raines, former NY Times executive editor, said earlier this year: "Almost all leakers are lawyers. That's the bottom line."
By Cassandra, at
Fri Oct 20, 08:16:00 AM:
Which is a far cry from saying that almost all lawyers are leakers.
But still...
Could this possibly be because law school encourages them to take a legalistic view of the law **? What a dismal comment, if that were the case, on the art of legal reasoning.
**i.e., one akin to the Times' justly famed 'flexible urban sensibility'?
By Sissy Willis, at
Fri Oct 20, 09:09:00 AM:
And here I thought it was Republicans that were so stupid.
By 
, at
Fri Oct 20, 09:57:00 AM:
I guess the first questions are:
A) Who does the staffer work for specifically...
B) What was his clearance and his justification to Director John Negroponte for said documents and...
C) Wouldn't this mean that Negroponte is the actual leaker?
By ex-democrat, at
Fri Oct 20, 10:30:00 AM:
shochu - was that parody? only i find it hard to believe your comment was inadvertently that stupid.
By skipsailing, at
Fri Oct 20, 10:34:00 AM:
And thus: Frankly, this information shouldn’t be much of a surprise to informed Americans either The spin begins.
Gosh, where have we heard this line of crap before?
Oh yeah, when the NYT outed the SWIFT program.
Just substitute NIE for SWIFT and you will have EXACTLY what the ever so reliable peace weenies will say about this. It will go like this:
"Nothing to see hear folks. The terrorists already knew all of this and you should have known too, so this is no big deal, just keep walking."
In the meantime, there's this:
NEW YORK (AP) - The New York Times Co. (NYSE:NYT) reported sharply lower earnings for its third quarter Thursday on a 4.2 per cent decline in advertising revenues and charges for job cuts and the sale of its stake in a cable network.
but hey, just keep outing those important state secrets, that's the ticket.
Closer to my home the ever so reliable liberal rag, AKA The Cleveland Plain Dealer, will slash 17 writers from its staff by offering buy outs.
So what's the general impression one derives from angst ridden left? It seems to me that they are urging everyone to join the pack as they run like lemmings off a cliff.
Denial is an amazing weapon.
the old line media denies that it is pissing away its franchise. Instead it blames the internet.
Shochu John denies that leaking classified documents is a problem, because someone with which he agrees decided that they weren't really important secrets anyway.
The left in general denies that radical islam is a serious threat to us because fighting a war is not nearly as much fun as taking money from productive people and handing it to non productive people.
Net result: Lemming, meet cliff.
No thanks.
By ScurvyOaks, at
Fri Oct 20, 03:40:00 PM:
Off topic, but check out Derbyshire's 12:14 post at The Corner. He links a picture of the recent dinner club meeting at which TH was the speaker. The gentleman standing and holding forth is presumably our gracious host here, but it's perhaps not the best likeness of him.
By , at
Fri Oct 20, 05:09:00 PM:
Hoekstra makes a strong case:
I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff,
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Oct 20, 06:59:00 PM:
What that probably means is, "There were 4 people here who possessed that information at the time; one was me, and I trust the other two."
By Joe Yangtree, at
Sat Oct 21, 03:50:00 AM:
What that probably means is, "There were 4 people here who possessed that information at the time; one was me, and I trust the other two."
Not exactly.
"The officials said that the National Intelligence Estimate was marked "secret," rather than "top secret" or another more restrictive classification. As a result, thousands of people would have had access to it, including the intelligence, armed services and international relations committees of the House."
So, I guess that's more like there were 5438 people with access, and I trust the other 5437.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Oct 21, 04:55:00 PM:
Hogwash. According to that line of logic, seeing how I'm cleared higher than any congressmen (politicians just flat can't be trusted with some things, even friendly ones), I would have access to it.
It is true that the gap in proliferation of Secret and Top Secret documents is large, but one requires both a clearance AND a *need to know.* As cool as it would be, I can't just go down to the S-2 and ask for a copy of such and such because I feel like seeing it.
Also, having someone on your staff request a specific document three days before it ends up in a newspaper is, shall we say, suspicious.
By Gary Rosen, at
Sat Oct 21, 05:05:00 PM:
"shochu - was that parody? only i find it hard to believe your comment was inadvertently that stupid."
No, he really is that stupid :^).
By , at
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