Say Anything Blog

Captain Ed:

This time, the Washington Post uses its contacts in the CIA to expose an umbrella program called GST, the code for a loose affiliation of dozens of programs designed to locate and fight terrorists abroad rather than wait for them to show up here. Nothing about the article stands out as a smoking gun, it never alleges anything specifically illegal, but Dana Priest writes the front-pager as a warning that the President has gone out of control in defending the US from attack. . . .

This effort by Priest mirrors the slop served up by the NY Times on the NSA surveillance of international communications, except in one regard -- the activities described by Priest clearly fall under the category of the President's war powers. One cannot even claim the limited ambiguity of the NSA position on that point

Each and every one of these leaks undermines our ability to prosecute the global war on terrorism, but we need to remember that the journalists who are running these stories shouldn't be the primary targets of our ire. Their sources should be, for it is their sources who are illegally making this information public in an attempt to undermine a Presidential administration they dislike.

As I've said before, the journalists responsible should be subpoenaed and forced to turn over their sources. If they don't comply, they should be put in jail until they comply.

These leaks are making our country less safe. Every one of them moves us a little closer to another 9/11. They need to be stopped.

Now.