The Scandals continue:
12. First there is the culture, almost from the beginning of the Administration, of demonizing any news organization or commentator who criticized the President, starting with calling FOX News "not a legitimate news organization." This was, of course, another Alinskyite move (Rule 5 "Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon."; Rule 12 "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."). While the Administration has backed off somewhat from its direct attack on FOX, it continues to treat legitimate, but difficult, questions as merely political attacks, or irrelevant, or old news, or the like.
13. Second, there is the persistent insistence of this Administration, the "most transparent in history," of refusing to go "on the record" for much at all. Everything is on deep background so there is no accountability if it turns out to be false or misleading.
14. Third, is the overbroad and unnecessarily secret AP subpoena. Yes, the government has an interest in preventing disclosure of secrets which harm national security. And yes, sometimes that interest trumps the interests of the free press in gathering information. And yes, there was, in this case, a legitimate interest in protecting our sources and methods in this case because the leak endangered our agent within the enemy ranks. But our pursuit of such leaks from press sources should be carefully narrowed to the minimum necessary.
15. Fourth, and perhaps most dangerous of these abuses, was the subpoena naming FOX reporter James Rosen an unindicted co-conspirator and/or an aider and abettor of another leak. In the first place, the leak was of an opinion that the North Koreans would react to UN sanctions by detonating another nuclear device which was embarrassing to the Administration's position. But it hardly endangered national security in the same way as the leak involved in the AP matter. More importantly, the affidavit supporting the subpoena, signed off on by the Attorney-General himself, implied that news gathering under these circumstances is a criminal offense! The AP subpoena endangers the confidentiality of news sources, and is chilling to those sources. The Rosen matter is a direct threat to reporters themselves implying that they break the law when they seek information which might be classified. Thus it chills even attempts at news-gathering. And it exposes an administration that will just about anything to punish those who oppose it.
16. And the reaction of the Administration to exposure of these abuses is not to admit that it acted unlawfully and improperly, and vow not to do it again. No, the Attorney-General asserts that he was merely "wrong" to go as far as he did and promises to change his "guidelines." But guideline can always be changed or waived in "exceptional" cases. And if it is the Attorney General who determines whether a case is exceptional, the press will forever remain under the threat of prosecution if they displease the Administration. We don't need a shield law. What we need is a simple statement from the Attorney General and the President that what James Rosen did was not, and could not be, a crime under the First Amendment.
17. And finally, there is the hypocrisy of an Administration justifying these intrusions into press freedom by "national security" while not investigating far worse "leaks" from a national security point of view such as leaks surrounding the bin Laden raid which put the Pakistani doctor who helped us in prison for years, or the leak that confirmed we, along with Israel, had developed and deployed the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran which not only exposed our, and Israel's, covert operation but also effectively made it far more difficult for us to complain about other countries directing similar attacks against US interests. The differences between these "leaks" and the leak involved in the Rosen investigation are that these leaks were not only more serious, but they made the Administration look better and appear to have been sanctioned by the Administration - and, of course, there was no leak investigation.
One more installment in the list of scandals to come.
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