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The Department of Justice has concluded that, while its emphasis is on prosecuting leakers of classified information, the Espionage Act does permit the prosecution of journalists who publish such information without authorization: The espionage statutes concerning classified information could be employed against journalists who publish such information without authorization, a Justice Department official told Congress recently, elaborating on remarks made last year by Attorney General Gonzales. Those statutes, "on their face, do not provide an exemption for any particular profession or class of persons, including journalists," wrote Matthew W. Friedrich, DoJ Criminal Division Chief of Staff, in a March 2007...

Attorney General Gonzales: Indict the New York Times June 24th, 2006 Within days of the September 11th attacks, the head of Reuters’ worldwide news division, explaining the agency’s refusal to use the word “terrorist,” made the famous fatuous remark that “one man’s freedom terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Reuters, it seemed, wouldn’t be taking sides in America’s war on Islamic jihad, because as journalists, Reuters didn’t believe the American people and our allies are any “better” than our putrid enemies. Such is the repulsive state of the “moral equivalence” mongers in what passes for news journalism, even among those...

CAN JOURNALISTS REALLY BE PROSECUTED for publishing national security secrets? In the wake of a series of New York Times stories revealing highly sensitive counterterrorism programs, that question is increasingly the talk of newsrooms across the country, and especially one newsroom located on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in the face of a presidential warning, the...

Dr. John Eastman, Director of the Claremont Institute's Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, testified today at 10:00 a.m. Eastern at a U.S. House Intelligence Committee hearing addressing whether the media can be prosecuted for publishing classified information about ongoing intelligence operations designed to prevent another terrorist attack. Eastman argued that the First Amendment's Freedom of Press clause does not provide the institutional media a special exemption from the Espionage Act and other laws, and that enforcement of those laws is particularly important in the present assymetrical war against international terrorist organizations. A copy of his prepared testimony is available here. More...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security. The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that...

Back to Story - Help US could prosecute reporters for leaks: Gonzales 18 minutes ago The federal government appears to have the authority to prosecute journalists or newspapers for publishing classified information, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Sunday. The Justice Department is investigating who disclosed the government's secret domestic surveillance program to The New York Times, which broke the story in December. "There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said told ABC's "This Week," when asked if the government could prosecute...

If counterterrorism were a parlor game—and that is how, in their recent cavalier treatment of sensitive intelligence secrets, the Washington Post and the New York Times seem to regard it—Goss’s fretting could be easily dismissed. But every American was made aware on September 11 of the price of an intelligence shortfall. This is no game, but a matter of life and death.

Earlier administrations have fired and prosecuted government officials who provided classified information to the press. They have also tried to force reporters to identify their sources. But the Bush administration is exploring a more radical measure to protect information it says is vital to national security: the criminal prosecution of reporters under the espionage laws. Such an approach would signal a thorough revision of the informal rules of engagement that have governed the relationship between the press and the government for many decades. Leaking in Washington is commonplace and typically entails tolerable risks for government officials and, at worst, the...

NEW YORK On his national radio program today, William Bennett, the former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration official and now a CNN commentator, said that three reporters who won Pulitzer Prizes yesterday were not "worthy of an award" but rather "worthy of jail." He identified them as Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about the CIA's "secret prisons" in Europe, and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times, who exposed the National Security Agency's domestic (a.k.a. terrorist) spy program. Scott Johnson of the popular Powerline blog also weighed in today, under the heading "The...

"In disclosing a classified surveillance program, the newspaper scored a journalistic coup; it may also have committed a crime, and compromised our security."

Breaking – Proven reliable sources tell me that in tomorrow morning's edition of the NYT, the leftist paper will reveal that DOD has embedded military rapid reaction teams at a number of US embassies abroad. The Times is again giving our enemies hard intel they need to be more effective on the worldwide terrorism battlefield. The concept was very simple; When we got intel that known terrs were operating in a specific area, the US team already in place would be able to snatch them quickly. Because the team is already there, entry problems would be eliminated and reaction time...

Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. ..... But it's more likely prosecutors will use the Plame precedent to get journalists to disclose their sources. The NSA leak investigation issaid...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

COMMENTARYMarch 2006 Has the New York Times Violated the Espionage Act?Gabriel Schoenfeld“Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” Thus ran the headline of a front-page news story whose repercussions have roiled American politics ever since its publication last December 16 in the New York Times. The article, signed by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, was adapted from Risen’s then-forthcoming book, State of War.1 In it, the Times reported that shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush had “authorized the National Security Agency [NSA] to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States . . . without the court-approved warrants...

Jane Harmon: NY Times Should be Prosecuted In a stunning break with her party, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the New York Times should be prosecuted for damaging national security by revealing the National Security Agency's top secret terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush. "If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, there have to be some limits on press immunity," Harmon told NBC's "Meet the Press." Moderator Tim Russert then pressed: "But if [the NSA leak] came from a whistleblower, should the New York Times reporter be prosecuted?"...

In today's article on the investigation of the leaks underlying the New York Times's December 16 disclosure of the NSA terrorist surveillance program, the Times finally acknowledges its own legal jeopardy: [C]onservatives have attacked the disclosure of classified information as an illegal act, demanding a vigorous investigative effort to find and prosecute whoever disclosed classified information. An upcoming article in Commentary magazine suggests that the newspaper may be prosecuted for violations of the Espionage Act and says, "What The New York Times has done is nothing less than to compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in the war on...

Let’s say you’re a federal prosecutor.        You’re investigating officials in the Bush White House, trying to find out whether they violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act when they told reporters that Valerie Wilson, wife of the ardent Bush critic Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA. Violations of those laws would be a very serious matter indeed. And just to make your investigation a high-pressure affair, you’re dealing with some very prominent figures, including Lewis Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, and Karl Rove, the president’s top political adviser.Then you run into a problem. You look...

Ever since 9/11, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement authorities have bent every effort to prevent our being taken once again by surprise. An essential component of that effort, the interception of al-Qaeda electronic communications around the world, has been conducted by the NSA, the government arm responsible for signals intelligence. The particular NSA program now under dispute, which the Times itself has characterized as the U.S. government’s “most closely guarded secret,” was set in motion by executive order of the President shortly after the attacks of September 11. Just as the Times has reported, it was designed to track and listen...

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Thursday that the disclosure of once-classified projects like President Bush's no-warrant eavesdropping program has undermined their work. "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing disclosures about a variety of CIA programs that he suggested may have been compromised. Mr. Goss said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine "who is leaking this information."

“Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” Thus ran the headline of a front-page news story whose repercussions have roiled American politics ever since its publication last December 16 in the New York Times. The article, signed by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, was adapted from Risen’s then-forthcoming book, State of War.1 In it, the Times reported that shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush had “authorized the National Security Agency [NSA] to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States . . . without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” Not since Richard Nixon’s misuse...

Two former officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group were charged in an indictment filed Thursday with illegally conspiring to gather and disclose classified national security information to journalists and an unnamed foreign power that government officials identified as Israel. The indictment accused Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly senior staff members at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, with improperly disclosing national security information beginning in April 1999. The group dismissed the two men last April. As the committee's director of foreign policy issues, Mr. Rosen was a highly visible figure in Washington who helped the organization define its...

Several years ago we had a law that prevented the politicians from using our soldiers as political pawns; it's time to re-enact a section of the Espionage Act of June 15, 1917. Here it is: “SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty,...