Posted on 08/07/2007 10:39:36 AM PDT by Contentions
Dana Priest is a national-security correspondent for the Washington Post. Her professional success depends in large part on her ability to ferret out secrets from the U.S. intelligence and defense bureaucracy and from knowledgeable officials on Capitol Hill.
Sources within government, acting in violation of the laws governing secrecy, regularly provide her with classified information in exchange for her promise not to disclose their identity, even if this means she must defy a court order and possibly go to jail. This year, Priest won a major journalism award for a November 2005 article bringing to light the highly classified fact that the CIA had established detention facilities for terrorists in foreign countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...
The criminals are those that provide her with classified information.
Pol Pot wasn't a "common criminal" either.
As the article points out, freedom of the press, like the analogous attorney-client privilege, does not cover complicity in a crime, especially a major felony.
A lawyer is not obliged to rat on a client who proposes to commit a crime, I don’t believe, but he could be jailed if he agrees to participate in it.
Dana Priest, like several other reporters, has knowingly and willingly participated in outright crimes, as an accomplice or possibly as the instigator. Freedom of the press does not cover such criminal activities.
Yes, the worst criminals are the scum in the CIA, FBI, State Department, and congress who leak these sensitive classified documents and violate their oaths of office. But the reporters are complicit. They should be prosecuted and jailed until they reveal their sources at the very least.
The Justice Department understands this. But, regretably, it does nothing.
Is the Ayatollah Shi’ite?
Isn't she the one who looks like a ferret?
Good analysis. I often wonder why the Justice Department is so curiously uninterested in pursuing the sources of intelligence leaks, even those clearly detrimental to American national interests. One would imagine that a sting operation of significant proportions would not significantly tax the resources or imagination of those whose profession it is to catch bad guys.
No, reporters who pass on classified information that they are not entitled to have (meaning everything) are guilty of a crime. The Supreme Court in the Pentagon Papers case specifically reaffirmed that position, but said the government couldn’t prosecute them for merely having the material and they couldn’t stop them from publishing it (prior restraint). It was the act of passing it to others (in the form of an article) that would be a crime. She did that. She’s a criminal and should be prosecuted as such.
Gee, ya' mean that things have changed since Watergate days?
Newsflash!!
Receipt of stolen goods is also a crime!!!!!!!
.....But, regretably, it does nothing....
Au contraire mi amigo (a little Frogmex there)
This week an investigation began into a leaker from I believe the Department of justice, a clinton hold over who might be the leaker of FISA stuff.
I read all MWT's post, trying to learn a little heb-mex.
.....heb-mex.....
difficult to master. I only know one phrase....Yada Yada Yada por favor.
“The criminals are those that provide her with classified information.”
Yup. I’d like to see more busts along this line...time to raid the homes of some civilian employees and military officers that are leaking.
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