Shhh...no leaking or else

UPDATE (March 6ish)

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks
Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006; A01

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information,
has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government
sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation
inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters
could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security
Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from
the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that
led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic
surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence
officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies
also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing
even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources
familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether
to approve tougher penalties for leaking.

In a little-noticed case in California, FBI agents from Los Angeles have
already contacted reporters at the Sacramento Bee about stories published in
July that were based on sealed court documents related to a terrorism case
in Lodi, according to the newspaper.

Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the
incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against
leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense
relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging
reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information,
and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business
risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill
Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I
don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like
the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be
promoting abroad."

below posted back in Feb

Reprint from Secrecy News email blast

CLASSIFICATION LAWS APPLY TO EVERYONE, JUDGE SAYS

>
> In a startling pronouncement that can only heighten tensions between
> the press and the government, a federal judge said last week that
> the laws governing classified information apply to anyone who is in
> receipt of such information, including reporters who are the
> recipients of "leaks."
>
> "Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into
> unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by
> the law," said Judge T.S. Ellis III. "That applies to academics,
> lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."
>
> Judge Ellis's statement came at the conclusion of a sentencing
> hearing for Lawrence Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst who was
> charged along with two former officials of the American Israel
> Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with felony violations of the
> Espionage Act.
>
> The extraordinary claim that mere possession of classified
> information triggers legal obligations leads to absurd conclusions,
> particularly since anyone who reads the daily newspaper comes into
> "unauthorized possession of classified information."
>
> More importantly, it serves to discourage investigative reporting of
> illegal government activities that happen to be classified.
>
> The provisions of the Espionage Act to which Judge Ellis was
> referring are "in many respects incomprehensible," wrote Harold
> Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. in their definitive1973 study "The
> Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information,"
> Columbia Law Review, May 1973, vol. 73, pp. 929-1087 (Secrecy News,
> 10/19/05).
>
> Judge Ellis's statement was first reported in "Sentence in Franklin
> case sends chill through free-speech community" by Ron Kampeas,
> Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 24.

> Lawrence A. Franklin was sentenced January 20 on three felony
> counts: conspiracy to communicate national defense information to
> persons not entitled to receive it; conspiracy to communicate
> classified information to an agent of a foreign government; and the
> unlawful retention of national defense information. See this
> January 20 news release from the Department of Justice.
>
>
> The prosecution of the two former AIPAC officials who were charged
> with Franklin, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, raises press freedom
> issues with even greater urgency since neither of them, unlike
> Franklin, held a security clearance.
>
> Their attorneys last week filed motions to dismiss the case, but
> those motions are sealed pending a security review.

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? ~ V.I. Lenin