Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Obama heeft eigenlijk best wel een hoop gemeen met Balkenende, ze gaan
alle twee voor goud, en geven niets om de gevolgen.
Hebben beiden een behoorlijke stiekeme kant, etc. etc.

Zou me eigenlijk niet verwonderen als Balkenende ook naar de USA gaat,
net als de vorige conservatieve president Aznar. Die was ook zo geliefd
in Spanje dat hij zich terug trok in de USA.

Groet / Cees

June 11, 2010
Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12leak.html
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — Hired in 2001 by the National Security Agency to help it
catch up with the e-mail and cellphone revolution, Thomas A. Drake
became convinced that the government’s eavesdroppers were squandering
hundreds of millions of dollars on failed programs while ignoring a
promising alternative.

He took his concerns everywhere inside the secret world: to his bosses,
to the agency’s inspector general, to the Defense Department’s inspector
general and to the Congressional intelligence committees. But he felt
his message was not getting through.

So he contacted a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.

Today, because of that decision, Mr. Drake, 53, a veteran intelligence
bureaucrat who collected early computers, faces years in prison on 10
felony charges involving the mishandling of classified information and
obstruction of justice.

The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama
administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration
in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks.

In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every
previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has
taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his
predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press.

Mr. Drake was charged in April; in May, an F.B.I. translator was
sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing classified documents to a
blogger; this week, the Pentagon confirmed the arrest of a 22-year-old
Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing a classified video of an
American military helicopter shooting Baghdad civilians to the Web site
Wikileaks.org.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has renewed a subpoena in a case
involving an alleged leak of classified information on a bungled attempt
to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program that was described in “State of War,”
a 2006 book by James Risen. The author is a reporter for The New York
Times. And several press disclosures since Mr. Obama took office have
been referred to the Justice Department for investigation, officials
said, though it is uncertain whether they will result in criminal cases.

As secret programs proliferated after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush
administration officials, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, were
outspoken in denouncing press disclosures about the C.I.A.’s secret
prisons and brutal interrogation techniques, and the security agency’s
eavesdropping inside the United States without warrants.

In fact, Mr. Drake initially drew the attention of investigators because
the government believed he might have been a source for the December
2005 article in The Times that revealed the wiretapping program.

Describing for the first time the scale of the Bush administration’s
hunt for the sources of The Times article, former officials say 5
prosecutors and 25 F.B.I. agents were assigned to the case. The homes of
three other security agency employees and a Congressional aide were
searched before investigators raided Mr. Drake’s suburban house in
November 2007. By then, a series of articles by Siobhan Gorman in The
Baltimore Sun had quoted N.S.A. insiders about the agency’s
billion-dollar struggles to remake its lagging technology, and panicky
intelligence bosses spoke of a “culture of leaking.”

Though the inquiries began under President Bush, it has fallen to Mr.
Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to decide whether to
prosecute. They have shown no hesitation, even though Mr. Drake is not
accused of disclosing the N.S.A.’s most contentious program, that of
eavesdropping without warrants.

The Drake case epitomizes the politically charged debate over secrecy
and democracy in a capital where the watchdog press is an institution
even older than the spy bureaucracy, and where every White House makes
its own calculated disclosures of classified information to reporters.

Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the
Federation of American Scientists, who has long tracked the uneasy
commerce in secrets between government officials and the press, said Mr.
Drake might have fallen afoul of a bipartisan sense in recent years that
leaks have gotten out of hand and need to be deterred. By several
accounts, Mr. Obama has been outraged by some leaks, too.

“I think this administration, like every other administration, is driven
to distraction by leaking,” Mr. Aftergood said. “And Congress wants a
few scalps, too. On a bipartisan basis, they want these prosecutions to
proceed.”

Though he is charged under the Espionage Act, Mr. Drake appears to be a
classic whistle-blower whose goal was to strengthen the N.S.A.’s ability
to catch terrorists, not undermine it. His alleged revelations to Ms.
Gorman focused not on the highly secret intelligence the security agency
gathers but on what he viewed as its mistaken decisions on costly
technology programs called Trailblazer, Turbulence and ThinThread.

“The Baltimore Sun stories simply confirmed that the agency was ineptly
managed in some respects,” said Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence
historian and author of “The Secret Sentry,” a history of the N.S.A.
Such revelations hardly damaged national security, Mr. Aid said.

Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit
group that defends whistle-blowers, said the Espionage Act, written in
1917 for the pursuit of spies, should not be used to punish those who
expose government missteps. “What gets lost in the calculus is that
there’s a huge public interest in the disclosure of waste, fraud and
abuse,” Ms. Radack said. “Hiding it behind alleged classification is not
acceptable.”

Yet the government asserts that Mr. Drake was brazen in mishandling and
sharing the classified information he had sworn to protect. He is
accused of taking secret N.S.A. reports home, setting up an encrypted
e-mail account to send tips to Ms. Gorman, collecting more data for her
from unwitting agency colleagues, and then obstructing justice by
deleting and shredding documents.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, author of “Necessary Secrets,” a book proposing
criminal penalties not just for leakers but for journalists who print
classified material, said that whatever his intentions, Mr. Drake must
be punished.

“The system is plagued by leaks,” said Mr. Schoenfeld, a senior fellow
at the Hudson Institute, a conservative research organization. “When you
catch someone, you should make an example of them.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Matthew A. Miller, said the
Drake case was not intended to deter government employees from reporting
problems. “Whistle-blowers are the key to many, many department
investigations — we don’t retaliate against them, we encourage them,”
Mr. Miller said. “This indictment was brought on the merits, and nothing
else.”

Though Mr. Obama began his presidency with a pledge of transparency, his
aides have warned of a crackdown on leakers. In a November speech, the
top lawyer for the intelligence agencies, Robert S. Litt, decried “leaks
of classified information that have caused specific and identifiable
losses of intelligence capabilities.” He promised action “in the coming
months.”

Prosecutions like those of Mr. Drake; the F.B.I. translator, Shamai
Leibowitz; and potentially Specialist Bradley Manning, the Army
intelligence analyst, who has not yet been charged, have only a handful
of precedents in American history. Among them are the cases of Daniel
Ellsberg, a Defense Department consultant who gave the Pentagon Papers
to The Times in 1971, and Samuel L. Morison, a Navy analyst who passed
satellite photographs to Jane’s Defense Weekly in 1984.

Under President Bush, no one was convicted for disclosing secrets
directly to the press. But Lawrence A. Franklin, a Defense Department
official, served 10 months of home detention for sharing classified
information with officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, and I. Lewis
Libby Jr., a top aide to Mr. Cheney, was convicted of perjury for lying
about his statements to journalists about an undercover C.I.A. officer,
Valerie Plame Wilson.

The F.B.I. has opened about a dozen investigations a year in recent
years of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, according
to a bureau accounting to Congress in 2007.

But most such inquiries are swiftly dropped, usually because hundreds of
government employees had access to the leaked information and
identifying the source seems impossible. Often even a determined hunt
fails to find the source, and agencies sometimes oppose prosecution for
fear that even more secrets will be disclosed at a trial.

By Justice Department rules, investigators may seek to question a
journalist about his sources only after exhausting other options and
with the approval of the attorney general. Subpoenas have been issued
for reporters roughly once a year over the last two decades, according
to Justice Department statistics, but such actions are invariably fought
by news organizations and spark political debate over the First Amendment.

The reporter in the Drake case, Ms. Gorman, who now works at The Wall
Street Journal, was never contacted by the Justice Department, according
to two people briefed on the investigation. With Mr. Drake’s own
statements to the F.B.I. in five initial months of cooperation, along
with his confiscated computers and documents, investigators believed
they could prove their case without her. Prosecutors further simplified
their task by choosing to charge Mr. Drake not with transferring
classified material to Ms. Gorman but with a different part of the
espionage statute: illegal “retention” of classified information.

An Air Force veteran who drove an electric car, Mr. Drake has long
worked on the boundary between technology and management. After years as
an N.S.A. contractor, he was hired as an employee and turned up for his
first day of work on Sept. 11, 2001. His title at the time hints at the
baffling layers of N.S.A. bureaucracy, with more than 30,000 employees
at the Fort Meade, Md., headquarters alone: “Senior Change Leader/Chief,
Change Leadership & Communications Office, Signals Intelligence
Directorate.”

Chris Frappier, a close friend since high school in Vermont, described
Mr. Drake then as fascinated by technology and international affairs,
socially awkward, with “an incredible sense of duty and honor.”

When he read the indictment, said Mr. Frappier, now a legal investigator
in Vermont, he recognized his old friend.

“It’s just so Tom,” Mr. Frappier said. “He saw something he thought was
wrong, and he thought it had to be stopped.”

According to two former intelligence officials, Mr. Drake became a
champion of ThinThread, a pilot technology program designed to filter
the flood of telephone, e-mail and Web traffic that the N.S.A. collects.
He believed it offered effective privacy protections for Americans, too.

But agency leaders rejected ThinThread and chose instead a rival program
called Trailblazer, which was later judged an expensive failure and
abandoned. Mr. Drake and some allies kept pressing the case for
ThinThread but were rebuffed, according to former agency officials.

“It was a pretty sharp battle within the agency,” said a former senior
intelligence official. “The ThinThread guys were a very vocal minority.”

One former N.S.A. consultant recalled “alarmist memos and e-mails” from
Mr. Drake, including one that declared of the agency: “The place is
almost completely corrupted.”

Mr. Drake, whom friends describe as a dogged, sometimes obsessive man,
took his complaints about ThinThread and other matters to a series of
internal watchdogs. He developed a close relationship with intelligence
committee staff members, including Diane S. Roark, who tracked the
security agency for the House Intelligence Committee. She discussed with
Mr. Drake the possibility of contacting Ms. Gorman, according to people
who know Ms. Roark.

The subsequent investigation, which included a search of Ms. Roark’s
house, devastated Mr. Drake, his wife — herself an N.S.A. contractor —
and their teenage son.

“For Tom Drake, a man who loves his country and has devoted most of his
life to serving it, this is particularly painful,” said his lawyer,
James Wyda, the federal public defender for Maryland. “We feel that the
government is wrong on both the facts alleged and the principles at
stake in such a prosecution.”

Forced in 2008 out of his job at the National Defense University, where
the security agency had assigned him, Mr. Drake took a teaching job at
Strayer University. He lost that job after the indictment and now works
at an Apple computer store. He spends his evenings, friends say,
preparing his defense and pondering the problems of N.S.A., which still
preoccupy him.

Mario D. Mazzarella
Newport News, VA
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
This is outrageous on the government's part. Prosecuting this
whistleblower has less to do with security than covering up an
embarassing government agency's lapse of competence.
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24.
FiX
New York
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
One should not trust a government which fears the truth.
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20.
R. Smithy
Tysons Corner, Va.
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
So the administration will "look forward, not backwards" when it comes
to war crimes and torture, yet prosecutes whistleblowers and other
heroes who report government abuses to the press.

Now that's Change We Can Believe In (TM)!
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3.
joe
new jersey
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Of course, the President who promised transparancy doesn't like it if
exposes him to the type of lambasting that Goerge Bush got.
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13.
JoeGiul
Florida
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Transparency??
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14.
jon
chicago
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
more shame on Obama. if insiders are committing illegal and immoral acts
- and we know they are - they should be known. government is for and by
the people.
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25.
disgusted at the culture we live in
Brooklyn, NY
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
See how ruthless and aggressive he is when it comes to keeping himself
in power?

He works hard for himself, but not for us, the Middle Class.
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9.
atticus
urbana, il
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm

This guy goes to jail and Dick Cheney does not? Shame, in multiple
directions.
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6.
Gustavo Corral
NYC
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Your words are like pearls! What has changed with Obama ?? Those in
power act as they always have; once the crown is on their heads they
forget any ideals they might have had.
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22.
bd
nj
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
This president has only one goal, get re-elected. He can't do any thing
right. His biggest supporter, MEDIA keeps proping him up. Many people
who voted for him are kicking themselves. This is not a leak or secret.
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5.
demidan
grand rapids, mi
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
The only leak that He should be worried about is a mile under water; esp
if the leak involved stemming Gov. waste.
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16.
Steve
Pittsburgh
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
I thought I was voting for FDR.
Obama is just another republican.
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21.
G.S.
Wy
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Yea, Mobama forgot about "transparency" ( among other things), as soon
as he took office. how anyone can still trust this man is beyond me.
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10.
connie mack
phoenicia new york
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
yes, so far i think it's safe to say that this administration should be
re-named....george w. bush 3.
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30.
steven
east hampton, new york
June 11th, 2010
2:18 pm
My, my. The accountability and responsibility president proves thin
skinned once again. Does his highness think he is above criticsm? Or
does he want to make sure that everything is nicely sanitized before it
goes public?

The more that things "change," the more they stay the same.
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15.
steph
nyc
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
this is disgusting! drop the prosecution against this man Drake!
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38.
Publius
NY
June 11th, 2010
3:04 pm
Obama is outrageous! And I voted for him as a progressive liberal and a
denunciator of W!

This evening at cocktail hour I will raise a glass to the leakers and
whistleblowers and denounce Obama. He is an extreme disappointment.

I will also make a donation to wikileaks.org
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11.
learned hand
nyc
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Obama has also outdone every other President in catastrophic
environmental damage as well. And appointment of radicals/ socialists.
One term please...
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23.
Bill
New York
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Excellent. Now we know what he feels strongly about.
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12.
JWK
Charlotte, NC
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
This man is a patriot. While it may be legally and strategically
appropriate to prosecute him, morally this is much more of a gray area
and I wish the administration would have exercised better discretion in
making this decision.
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19.
AC
Southwest
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
Too bad the 'leak prosecutions' do not include British Petroleum, the US
Mineral and Management Service, or our pontificating windbags in
Congress whose job it was to see that oil drilling in US waters was
supposed to be done in a safe and responsible fashion.
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18.
disgusted at the culture we live in
Brooklyn, NY
June 11th, 2010
2:05 pm
People say Obama is weak. People say Obama is not taking REAL action on
the Gulf Spill because he is weak and ineffectual. Or that he did not
take action on forcing the Blue Dogs and supporting the public option
because he is weak.

Obama's successfully and aggressively run presidential election campaign
to elect himself as President, and now this report showing how
ruthlessly he comes down on "leakers," shows that Obama can be strong
when he wants to be.

All this shows that Obama is not weak. He takes no real action in
stemming the Gulf leak not because he is weak, but maybe because he does
not want to...

Let's lay to rest forever the notion and excuse that Obama does nto do
things because he is weak. Obama is ruthless and strong and agressive
when it is about keeping himself in power.

When he is weak or takes no action, as in trhe case of BP, it is because
he does not want to take action, maybe because he is indebted to special
interests, not because he is weak.

(And please don't use the other excuse, that he is clueless, since he is
supposed to be highly intelligent. He cannot be that stupid.)
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48.
Bill
NYC
June 11th, 2010
3:04 pm
I guess this explains the complaints from reporters that Homeland
Security is denying them access to the Gulf. Too bad Obama's more
worried about the truth leaking out than oil leaking out.
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37.
jnewser
Chicago, IL
June 11th, 2010
3:04 pm
So much for transparency. Thank God for the leakers whose conscience
brings to light malfeasance and crimes both in government and corporations.
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32.
A Thinker
A rational place, USA
June 11th, 2010
3:04 pm
BO fails to keep yet another campaign promise.

So much for the administration's promises for a more open government.
Is there even one politician left who isn't a liar?
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