Reports that the Obama administration targeted the records of reporters in an effort to determine who in government leaked secret information about a Yemeni bomb plot and a CIA report on North Korea would almost be amusing if the implications weren’t so troubling. Leaking information seems to be a forte of his administration – mainly, it seems, when the image of the president is thereby enhanced.
As we’ve noted, there were leaks of classified information to The New York Times during last year’s presidential campaign about the inner workings of the U.S. military’s use of drones, placing Mr. Obama at the operational center. An article based on the leaks referred to interviews with three dozen of the president’s “current and former advisers” and even noted that one had “requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.”
The Times also ran a story about how Mr. Obama was central to cyber efforts to destabilize the Iranian nuclear program, citing interviews “with former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program” who demanded anonymity “because the effort remains highly classified…” We also pointed to White House cooperation with filmmakers in a project involving the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden and what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, usually a supporter of the president, had to say about that:
The White House is counting on [the moviemakers]…to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual…. [They] are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
Have anyone read or heard of any investigations into those leaks? We sure haven’t.