Word: leakings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Libby is charged with perjury, not with the leak itself. But some might recall that perjury, and not illicit sex, was the charge in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton a few years ago. And many people--including me--felt that prosecutor Ken Starr had set Clinton up: perjury is not good, but there had been a fundamental unfairness in forcing Clinton to choose between committing perjury and revealing information he should never have been asked for. Libby's case is similar, isn't it? That is, it is similar if you hold to all the theology about the importance...
...specific facts of this saga have not been friendly to the press's arguments. Far from keeping the government honest, the leaks or intended leaks in this tale were all part of a dizzy spin campaign in the Vice President's office. What's more, everyone involved seems to have overlooked the fact that a leak of the identity of an undercover officer can be against the law. This is a law that even most journalists think is reasonable. This law cannot be enforced if one of the parties to an illegal conversation is protected by the Fifth Amendment...
...even Bob Woodward can't create a leak all by himself. It takes two. You need someone else with inside knowledge of the evildoing in question. And here is what's strange: the gospel of the leak has nothing to say about sources except that the reporter won't blab about who they are. If the boss finds out who the leakers are in some other way and fires them, or if they find themselves the subject of a gargantuan federal prosecution, they should not look to the press for sympathy...
...coverage. It's great to see the ham-handed machinations of the Bush Administration exposed. Yet Libby faces the possibility of years in prison and the certainty of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills--all because he allegedly tried to help journalists produce this sacred object, a leak...
...when journalists are threatened, the voices of journalism make no such distinction between good leaks and bad ones. If they did, this one would certainly qualify as a bad leak. The secret it revealed, a U.S. intelligence officer's identity, should have stayed secret. Nor did anyone ever suggest that New York Times reporter Judy Miller should not qualify for protection because she never used the stuff Scooter leaked...