DOJ: Prosecute reporters...

From the Sacramento Bee:

Editorial: Your eyes only
Administration tries to plug leaks
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, March 9, 2006
Story appeared in Editorials section, Page B8

Ironies abound in how the Bush administration handles classified information. It has set an all-time record for classifying information, yet has been willing to leak classified information to serve its own purposes. But when opponents within the administration do the same, the administration cries foul.

Now, it has gone too far. A Bush Justice Department court filing asserts a novel theory that private citizens and journalists can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act simply for receiving and publishing classified information.

This sweeping claim comes in a case brought by the Justice Department against two lobbyists. In conversation, then-Pentagon official Lawrence A. Franklin leaked a controversial proposal by Pentagon neoconservatives to destabilize Iran. Private citizens Steven J. Rosen, director of foreign policy issues for the American-Israel Political Action Committee, and Keith Weissman, its senior Middle East analyst, repeated what they heard to Israeli diplomats, Washington think tank analysts and journalists.

The old view of the espionage law was that it was a crime for a government official who has responsibility for protecting classified information to leak it. In this case, Franklin pleaded guilty. He had a security clearance and had signed an agreement not to transmit classified information to outsiders. He broke the law.

But the Bush administration goes on to assert that people who listen to what a government official has to say and pass it on also have committed a crime - even though, as government outsiders, they may have no way of knowing whether information is classified.

The reality, since the beginning of our republic, is that administration officials often deliberately leak classified information to influence public debate. In other cases, government officials see it as their patriotic duty to expose certain information. They know they are breaking the law and are willing to commit an act of civil disobedience. But private citizens who receive the information have no obligation to preserve classified information. Our laws recognize that, in some circumstances, the only effective restraint on the president and Congress is an informed and critical public.

The Justice Department brief admits in passing that prosecuting the press under espionage laws for publishing classified information leaked by a government source has never taken place. Let's keep it that way.

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