Yeah, so if you accept my premise that the FBI & DOJ aren't going to prosecute newspapers, TV networks or their reporters over a low-level leak like this, then the other conspirators have to be other people in the Government.
And that gets really interesting. If he was the leaker was he acting on his own? Or was he doing the bidding of some (or, even all) of the SSCI?
The material being leaked was Executive Branch material. The SSCI can't arbitrarily decide to de-classify a lot of it. Were some of the members of the SSCI co-conspirators?
Here are the current members. Membership might have been slightly different prior to Jan 2017, when some of the leaking was taking place.
your list is missing Schiff
at least. Nunes is the only gang of eight member I trust.\
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/01/obama-expanding-nsa-powers/513041/
Why Is Obama Expanding Surveillance Powers Right Before He Leaves Office?
It could be to prevent Trump from extending them even more.
KAVEH WADDELL
JAN 13, 2017
https://www.aei.org/publication/from-the-gang-of-eight-to-the-gang-of-37/
From ‘The Gang of Eight’ to ‘The Gang of 37’?
Society and Culture
The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee late Thursday approved legislation that would for all intents and purposes eliminate the practice of restricting intelligence briefings to the “Gang of Eight,” a group that includes the party leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the ranking Democrat and Republican on each intelligence committee. The new provision would do away with the existing provision in the intelligence oversight act giving the president the authority to restrict the flow of the most sensitive information to just the senior leadership on the Hill. As a result, the president’s current statutory duty to keep the congressional intelligence committees “fully and currently informed” of U.S. intelligence activities, including any “significant anticipated intelligence activity,” such as a covert action program, would extend to all 15 members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 22 members on the House committee without exception.
The change is largely a result of two controversies: First, President Bush’s controversial decision in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to institute the more expansive electronic surveillance program against al Qaeda (the Terrorist Surveillance Program), which bypassed the existing statutory structure for governing such surveillance (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978). Second, his administration’s decision to use advanced interrogation methods (waterboarding, etc.) on a select number of high-value terrorist detainees. Both decisions were briefed to the “Gang of Eight” on several occasions. Once both programs became public, and became front-page news, several members of the “Gang of Eight” complained that they had not been fully informed or that they were in the impossible position of knowing what was going on but not in a position to do anything about it. Other members of the group suggest that they in fact were fully informed and note that there was at the time little, if any, expressed disapproval of the decisions taken by the president.