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Today, press reports indicate that it is Larry Hanauer, Rep. Jane Harman’s staffer, that Chairman Hoekstra has barred from seeing classified materials because he is suspected of having leaked the classified National Intelligence Estimate to the New York Times, in order to affect the election. This story is only beginning, and a fascinating backstory remains to be told about the Democrats in the House.

The illegal leaks of classified information dealing with ongoing operations and intelligence sources and methods put our American men and women in the military and intelligence community in danger. These leaks also cause immediate harm to our relationships with our allies in the war on terror, some of whom are asking whether the work we do together can be kept a secret. This week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) suspended a Democrat staff member of the Committee over concerns he may have illegally leaked the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to The New York Times last month. The Democrat...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee has suspended a Democratic staff member over a possible leak of a politically explosive intelligence report involving Iraq, officials said on Friday. The action, taken three weeks before the November election battle for control of Congress, brought a protest from the committee's leading Democrat who accused Republicans of political retaliation. The staff member, who was not identified, has not been accused of any wrongdoing, officials said. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, the panel chairman, ordered his security clearance suspended after another Republican lawmaker...

Clearly, some of those whom we have entrusted with our most sensitive national security secrets can not be trusted with secrets. Somebody working from inside our most trusted intelligence agencies, using hand-chosen pieces of those secrets to wage a personal political war against their political opponents, is providing aid and comfort to America’s enemies in that process. Not long ago, this was a traitorous act of treason. Today, those who seek to capitalize politically on these leaks, call it patriotic dissent. The question is – what do American voters call it?

Indict the New York Times By Henry Mark Holzer FrontPageMagazine.com | September 29, 2006 It is an article of faith on the Left and among its fellow travelers that the Bush administration stole two elections, made war on Iraq for venal reasons, tortured hapless foreigners, and conducted illegal surveillance of innocent Americans. A corollary of this mindset is that the press, primarily the Washington Post and The New York Times, has a right, indeed a duty, to print whatever they want about the administration—even if the information compromises national security. Not true. The press is not exempt from laws that...

The US Constitution defines the act of treason as follows, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” [Article III , section 3.] (snip) Modern liberal Democrats scoff at the term “treason,” used by many other Americans with increasing regularity, to describe the recent string of overt actions by “democratic progressive liberals” seeking to regain political power. They scoff because there is no such thing as treason in their minds, and all things are fair game in pursuit of power, even at the expense...

Blog | Talk Radio Online | Columnists | Your Opinion | The News | Photos | Funnies | Books & Movies | Issues | Action Center They just don't get it The left misreads the NIE and Islamic terrorism By David Strom Wednesday, September 27, 2006 Much has been made in recent days about the supposed conclusion of the latest National Intelligence Estimate that the war in Iraq has inflamed Islamic terrorists. The New York Times “broke” the story last week with a headline that screamed "Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat." The NIE in question, completed last...

 Last week the press, discreet as always, published a nugget mined from the top secret National Intelligence Estimate. The banner headlines suggested that our intelligence experts believe the war in Iraq to be an impediment in the “war on terror” because it stimulates al Qaeda’s recruitment. Democrats pounced. They seemed to believe that they had finally discovered their Holy Grail. At last they had official sanction for the view that fighting in Iraq hurts our cause. Maybe now they could oppose the war without alienating an electorate that rarely votes for poltroons during a war.The excitement didn’t last long. George...

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who investigated whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of a CIA operative for political payback, has spent $1.4 million in his probe over the past three years, his office reported yesterday -- a figure that establishes him as remarkably frugal in the ranks of recent special investigators. Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr's investigations of President Bill Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky and his ties to the failed Whitewater land investment cost $71.5 million and took eight years. Independent Counsel David M. Barrett's examination of Clinton housing secretary Henry G. Cisneros over...

Just when the Democrats thought it was safe to launch a weekend attack,using leaked documents, the President double-crossed them by de-classifying more of it ! Oh the humanity !

As media scoops go, those based on "classified" information seem to have a special cachet. But ...we wonder if anyone would bother to read this stuff if it didn't have the word "secret" slapped on it. That's our reaction to Sunday's New York Times report claiming that a 2006 national intelligence estimate, or NIE, concludes that "the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse..." This is supposedly because the war has provoked radical Islamists to hate America even more than they already did before they hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings. If this is the kind of...

Exclusive: New U.S. Government Videotape Simulates Terrorist Attacks September 12, 2006 7:41 PM Brian Ross and Asa Eslocker Report: ABC News has obtained videotapes of dramatic U.S. government field tests of new methods to thwart terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies abroad. In the videotape tests, government scientists stage real terror attacks -- slamming trucks at high speed into barriers and exploding bombs near buildings. Multiple camera angles capture the blasts' effects on test dummies, posing as diplomats seated at their desks. The U.S. Department of State spends $2 million a year to develop better boundary security equipment against such potential...

When we last tuned in on July 25th, Russell Tice - a disgruntled ex-NSA staffer was subpoenaed to appear before the GJ, but balked when he found out just how rigorous the DOJ is perusing the leakers. So what has been going on in the meantime? According to sources the initial focus of the GJ is towards the media involvement, with special emphasis on who in our Government, specifically within the IC, or (as many believe via their sources) from the Senate Intelligence Committee via a staffer, is leaking classified information.

Perhaps, dear reader, you are perplexed. Perhaps you remember the scandal surrounding the outing of the CIA agent Valerie Plame, a crime so heinous that her husband was forced to endure repeated magazine photo-shoots. Perhaps you remember Karl Rove's face on the covers of magazines and newspapers, along with hundreds of stories and driveway stakeouts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The military has charged a U.S. Navy officer who worked as a lawyer at Guantanamo Bay with mailing classified information on foreign terrorism suspects there to an unauthorized person, the Navy said on Tuesday. Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, stationed from July 2004 to January 2005 at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, faced a total of eight counts of three criminal charges and could spend 36 1/2 years in prison if convicted on all, the Navy said. Diaz, 40, was not charged with espionage and remains free, working at a Navy office in Jacksonville, Florida,...

NORFOLK - A Navy lawyer who was stationed at Guantanamo Bay has been charged with copying and sending secret information about detainees in U.S. custody to someone outside the government. Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz could face more than 36 years in prison if convicted of three violations of military law. Diaz, now based in Jacksonville, Fla., is tentatively scheduled for a preliminary hearing in October in Norfolk, said Beth Baker, a spokeswoman for the Navy's Mid-Atlantic Region.According to the eight specific counts against him, which the Navy released Monday, Diaz deliberately made "a print out of classified secret information...

Mike Isikoff and David Corn, whose work I often discount because of their evident biases, have now produced a new book, reiterating what we’ve been saying for some time: Richard Armitage was Robert Novak’s source about Plame and he kept silent as Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and the Administration in general were battered by the Plame/Wilsons and their proponents. Indeed, it was Corn who days after the Novak piece appeared reported in The Nation that Wilson’s wife was a “covert agent” who’d been outed in “revenge”, the meme that still is being played in the outer regions of sanity.

Sept. 4, 2006 issue - In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage was clearly agitated. As recounted in a new book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Novak ...wrote, was a "senior administration official" who was "not a partisan gunslinger." Armitage was shaken. After reading the column, he knew immediately who the leaker was. On the phone with Powell that morning, Armitage was "in deep distress," says a source directly familiar...

How Media Learned About Probe of Pro-Israel Lobbyists Sought By Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, August 23, 2006; A04 A federal judge has ordered an investigation into how reporters learned that two pro-Israel lobbyists were under federal investigation before they were formally charged, creating even more scrutiny of the media in a case with broad First Amendment implications. The order by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III in Alexandria came in the case against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, who are charged with receiving and disseminating national defense information. Legal experts say the case could lead to...

A federal judge has ordered a Justice Department probe into how CBS News obtained a story two years ago disclosing an FBI investigation into a pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Judge Thomas Ellis III issued the order last week in connection with the prosecution of two former Aipac employees, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. The two men are facing criminal charges of conspiracy to acquire and disclose classified information. Judge Ellis instructed the Justice Department "to conduct an investigation into the identity of any government employee responsible for the August 2004 disclosure to CBS News of...

There is nothing classified in Washington today, said U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., disturbed by leaked information. "These are stories that have made America less safe, in my view, and have endangered sources, methods and lives," Roberts said during a stop Wednesday afternoon in McPherson. He referred to stories on government surveillance tactics and money-tracking efforts to find terrorists. The stories not only rob the government of its national security tools, but they also are filled - "80 percent" - with errors, he said. "I'm stuck," Roberts added, because as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he can't...

ABC News is reporting that Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert. The disgrunted intelligence officers even disclosed an actual list of 12 high-value targets allegedly held by the CIA, and ABC is reporting it : Abu Zubaydah: Held first in Thailand then Poland Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi: Held in...

BRITAIN tried to oust the man leading the international campaign to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapons programme while he was in the middle of negotiations with Tehran, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. Classified British government documents detail Tony Blair's attempts to stop Mohammed El Baradei getting a third term in charge of the UN's nuclear inspectorate, amid claims that he had lost the confidence of the United States.

The disruption of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up airliners shows the importance of intelligence gathering and the need to pursue the "traitors" who recently leaked information about classified government programs, Sen. Rick Santorum said Friday. Those classified programs "were important for us to be able to confront an enemy in time of war," Santorum said. "When people leak that kind of information, to me, that is traitorous activity." Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican, acknowledged that he did not know whether classified programs recently brought to light by leaks, such as a National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program,...

In a momentous expansion of the government's authority to regulate public disclosure of national security information, a federal court ruled that even private citizens who do not hold security clearances can be prosecuted for unauthorized receipt and disclosure of classified information. The ruling (pdf) by Judge T.S. Ellis, III, denied a motion to dismiss the case of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who were charged under the Espionage Act with illegally receiving and transmitting classified information. The decision is a major interpretation of the Espionage Act with implications that extend far beyond this particular...

A.J. Strata informs us that Sidney Blumenthal has leaked the fact that NSA is assisting Israel in tracking weapons shipments from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, gaining him anti-Israel supporters and (one hopes) a chance to talk to the grand jury investigating NSA leaks: Why would Sydney Blumenthal risk everything to publicize the fact he has been leaked – and is publicizing – classified information? The leftwing, anti-Israel sites are lapping this up. But my guess is Sidney just won himself an invite to a Grand Jury looking into leaks at the NSA:

The New York Times may not withhold reporters' phone records from a federal grand jury investigating an alleged leak of a pending government raid on two Islamic charities suspected of supporting terrorism, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. A three-judge panel of the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the Times has no First Amendment or other legal right to refuse a demand for the records from the grand jury in Chicago, which was empaneled by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald. The government's interest in rooting out a possible crime outweighs...

Over the past few years we have witnessed unauthorized disclosures of classified information at an alarming rate. Repeatedly, we have witnessed leaks that warned our enemies how we are watching and listening to them, with whom we are cooperating and various methods of intelligence we are using to track them down. Every one of these leaks gravely threatens our national security and makes it easier for our enemies to achieve their murderous and destructive plans. Each violation of trust invites more chaos and violence into our world.

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that federal prosecutors investigating a leak about a terrorism funding probe can see the phone records of two New York Times reporters. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2-1 vote that prosecutors had a valid interest in seeing who had contacted the reporters. "We see no danger to a free press in so holding," Judge Ralph K. Winter wrote for the majority. The case involved stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon that revealed that the government...

You can imagine why George Tenet is mad at the 9/11 book The One Percent Doctrine and reviewers who finger the ex-CIA director as the key leaker in the tale of how the administration flopped into war. "It's not true that he was a cooperating source for [author Ron] Suskind," says an ally. Suskind agrees, E-mailing us: "Reviewers who've suggested that Tenet was the primary source [of over 100] are simply incorrect." But now stirred, the former top spy's team is taking aim at the larger book, which they say includes errors and exaggerations. Like where Suskind says Vice President...

Finally some reports are coming out regarding the NSA leak investigation and their prime target for the leaks: Capitol Hill. Jay Rockefeller, who was interviewed for the NY Times story which exposed our efforts to identify terrorists here in the US ready to attack us, is probably on the interview list. From the sounds of the reporting it does not appear to be a pleasant exercise for these all powerful men and women in Congress: There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in...

No one in the Bush administration has been stripped of security clearances over the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to reporters three years ago.In a letter to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the Central Intelligence Agency said it had no record of anyone in the administration who is no longer privy to the most sensitive U.S. secrets because of the Plame leak. The CIA also disclosed it has not yet completed a formal assessment of the damage to national security that may have been caused by Plame's outing in 2003. The assessment won't be completed until a criminal investigation...

Traffic was disrupted once again in a key Big Dig tunnel after inspectors found loose bolts in a ceiling panel the same sort of problem that is believed to have killed a motorist earlier this month. The $14.6 billion Big Dig project, the most expensive in U.S. history, buried much of the city's highway network in tunnels. It took over a decade to complete and has since been plagued by leaks, falling debris, cost overruns, delays and problems linked to faulty construction.

The Free Clinic knows how to stop a leak...

<p>Morton Halperin was once a name in the news. In 1969, then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger named Halperin to the NSA. But soon thereafter Kissinger suspected it was the dovish Halperin who leaked to the NY Times the fact that the US was secretly bombing Cambodia. The FBI began tapping his phone, and Halperin was soon gone from NSA. Perhaps Halperin's biggest claim to fame is the fact that Pres. Nixon put him on his 'Enemies List.' A red badge of courage, no pun intended, off which a person can no doubt eat for a lifetime in liberal circles.</p>

That a left-of-center bias grips the old media is undeniable. Too many years of content analyses and newsroom surveys close the case. So how do journalists in denial press on? They accuse their colleagues of being "lap dogs." It doesn't get more serious than the recent dispute over The New York Times's spilling of a classified counterterrorist program. But that spat with the administration, indeed over a serious breach of the national security, climaxed decades of the media's steady drift to the left. Some prominent figures in the establishment media, lapsing into momentary honesty, do admit the diagnosis. The late...

The first to arrive were a troop of Protest Warriors from New Jersey, who brought lots of flags and signs and stayed till the end, chanting and cheering.Soon the Caucus for America pulled up in a pickup truck, which would become our stage. The NYPD had been saving a space for us with a big truck.As the police barricades went up, we tied our signs and flags to them. When I saw that we had 30 or more people at a quarter to five, I knew it was going to be a success, since most people were coming after work....

The Bush administration is preparing a crackdown on intelligence leaks to the media and will try to pursue prosecutions in some recent cases, the chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra also suggested some unauthorized leaks could have been deliberate attempts to help al Qaeda. "More frequently than what we would like, we find out that the intelligence community has been penetrated, not necessarily by al Qaeda, but by other nations or organizations," he said. "I don't have any evidence. But from my perspective, when you have information that is leaked that...

WHY BIN LADEN WANTS HOME DELIVERY OF THE NEW YORK TIMESby Mia T, 7.11.06 IN A 'PINCH': RETHINKING THE FIRST AMENDMENT(Which came first, the 'journalist' or the traitor?) by Mia T, 6.27.06 "What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." James Madison hen the founders granted 'The Press' special dispensation, they never considered the possibility that traitors in our midst would game the system. But that is precisely what...

Share secrets with the enemy and their lawyers, the NY Times says -- Yesterday's New York Times editorial said Congress should make sharing secrets with the enemy the law of the land: “...Congress could create a new kind of military commission, operating as closely as possible to United States military law. That is the proposal of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of the Senate’s experts on military law, and Arlen Specter, the Judiciary Committee chairman. It sounds reasonable, as long as lawmakers resist pressure from the administration to deny the prisoners any real rights, barring them from...

The Worst Defense By David Horowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | July 10, 2006               It's been an interesting couple of weeks for looking at the war against the Islamo-fascists and other enemies of the United States. North Korea attempted to launch an Intercontinental Ballistic missile capable of reaching American shores and one day carrying a nuclear warhead. Both technologies were made available to the North Koreans  – to put the best possible face on it – by lax security controls and diplomatic follies during the Clinton Administration. To allay public distress over the missile launch President Bush announced that anti-ballistic systems...

With President Bush leading a charge against the "disgraceful" New York Times and a conservative talk-show host, Melanie Morgan, suggesting that maybe the Times' executive editor should be executed for treason, we face a fundamental dispute about the role of the press in America.

By FRANK MIELE Loyalty is generally considered a virtue. Disloyalty is generally considered a vice. But one must sometimes choose between conflicting loyalties, and one’s choices on such occasions go a long way toward defining a person’s character. For instance, a person might have a great love for his or her country, and yet have a greater love for God. If such people hold in their heart a religious belief that war is immoral, then they are granted a conscientious objector status and exempted from combat duty. Are these people disloyal to the United States? Not at all, but they...

by Mark Finkelstein July 9, 2006 That didn't take long! Just yesterday I suggested readers keep in mind the MSM's bashing of Pres. Bush on his birthday the next time a liberal accused conservatives of being 'mean-spirited.' Groucho fans will know what I mean when I say: bring down the duck! On last evening's Journal Editorial Report , liberal newsie Marvin Kalb said the magic 'm-s' word in condemning the Wall Street Journal for its criticism of the New York Times. The Journal had run an editorial, Fit and Unfit to Print [subscription required] that both explained why it had...

Whether The New York Times damaged national security by disclosing a highly classified intelligence program monitoring terrorist financing is, of course, the overriding question in the debate over that newspaper's controversial revelation. But, inevitably, the issue raises another question that so far has gone largely unexamined: Who is winning the resulting political battle over the press and national security? If it's President Bush, the administration and Republicans are being handed a potentially potent wedge issue. That could strengthen Bush's hand, not only in domestic political terms but in the far more important global struggle against a lethal terrorist enemy. If,...

NY Times Reporter Body Armor Vulnerability Analysis Author: Red Square, Location: Karl Marx Treatment Center Post Posted: 7/8/2006, 3:30 pm Earlier this year the New York Times courageously exposed vulnerabilities of US body armor, accompanying the story with a controversial diagram and a leaked Pentagon paper in a PDF file, identifying the best areas to shoot at. Today the Pentagon responded by releasing a diagram that details vulnerabilities of the New York Times journalists, which analysts predict is about to become the focus of a new media fury. "The Pentagon released the results of their secret research despite our strongest...

No man is above the law -- unless of course you're a confidential snitch who feeds classified information to a New York Times reporter! At least that's the way it seems because the New York Times has published leaked information -- information that compromises our ability to fight the war against al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihadists and places the lives of our brave men and women in uniform and American citizens in grave peril! And no one seems to be in a great rush to identify and prosecute the leaker! Yes, our political leaders have all been swift to give the...

The New York Times reported yesterday on the military's investigation into the killings at Haditha. The Times purports to describe the report that Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli has sent up the chain of command. No such information was officially available, as the investigation is not complete: In a brief statement issued from Iraq on Friday, General Chiarelli's headquarters said he had finished reviewing a lengthy investigation by Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell of the Army into the actions or absence of actions by Marine leaders in Haditha, as well as the training that marines had received and the command...

WASHINGTON, DC, MONDAY, JULY 3, 2006--The D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com and the online watchdog Accuracy in Media (www.AIM.org) held a press conference and demonstration Monday at the Washington, D.C., bureau of the New York Times to protest the newspaper's publishing of stories exposing national security intelligence programs. The two conservative groups called for the prosecution of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Executive Editor Bill Keller and reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for "giving aid and comfort to al-Qaida." The initial group of 14 FReepers, led by FreeRepublic's National Spokesman Kristinn Taylor, soon swelled to 29 protesters. They...

NEW YORK (AP) — Headline by headline, a trickle of news leaks on Iraq and the antiterror campaign has grown into a steady stream of revelations, and from Pennsylvania Avenue to Downing Street, Copenhagen to Canberra, governments are responding with pressure and prosecutions. The latest target is The New York Times. But the unfolding story begins as far back as 2003, when British weapons expert David Kelly was “outed” as the source of a story casting doubt on his government’s arguments for invading Iraq, and he committed suicide. And it will roll on this fall, when Danish journalists face trial...