The Politics of Leaking

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter explores the politics of the President's L.A. terror plot revelations-

The Shoe (Bomb) on the Other Foot

President Bush’s revelation about a foiled bomb plot shows the dangers of declassification for purely partisan purposes.

Poor Porter Goss. First, the longtime Florida congressman leaves his safe seat to become director of the CIA, only to find that he’s been neutered by a new bureaucratic setup where he reports to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. Then he writes an op-ed piece decrying intelligence leaks in The New York Times on Friday, the exact same day as a story appears identifying today’s biggest leaker of antiterrorism secrets in Washington—President George W. Bush...

Remember kiddies: When a series of concerned government whistleblowers leak information to expose Presidential wrongdoing and potential national security violations by the Executive branch, that is BAD. When said shameless Executive branch leaks national security information for their own gain, that is GOOD. Got it?