Conor Friedersdorf can be infuriating. He constructs an entire argument based on the premise that a) you can never totally eliminate damaging leaks of classified information, and b) that if you are too effective in limiting those kinds of leaks, you will just encourage people to bypass responsible corporate reporters and go to WikiLeaks or Anonymous.
Let me give Mr. Friedersdorf a hypothetical. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that there is a foreign country that has been in an official state of war with the United States for 60 years and that they have nuclear weapons and that they are a totalitarian society based on a Cult of Personality, and that they periodically shoot off missiles and other projectiles at their southern neighbors who are our close ally, and that they are developing more and better nuclear weapons and rockets and are a threat to proliferate that technology to countries like Iran. Let’s say that we were about to slap new United Nations sanctions on this country and we wanted to know how they might react. Let’s say that the CIA managed to get an asset high up in this country’s government who was willing to give us insights on how the country might react. And let’s say that this source told the CIA that the leadership would react in four ways, one of which would be to do another nuclear test.
Okay, are you still with me, Friedersdorf?
So, the CIA gets this very valuable and sensitive information and they distribute it to a small list of people who are cleared to know about such classified affairs. These are analysts and policymakers and military planners who have to be able to anticipate how the world might go all wobbly at a moment’s notice.
Then one of the analysts decides that it is very important that a reporter from Fox News not only get this information but that he learn how the CIA got it. And then the Fox News reporter doesn’t ask the CIA about it. He doesn’t try to find out whether it might be a problem if he reports this information. He just reports it. Like two hours after he gets the information. He tells the world that we have a source high up in the government of this foreign country. You know, maybe we could have overheard this information with our spying equipment. Maybe an intelligence officer from a foreign ally could have stolen the information.
So, now we have a very hard to get source not only pissed off at us but terrified for his life. And every other current or potential source in the world has to figure talking to us is a terrible idea.
The thing is, this isn’t a hypothetical. This is exactly what happened in the case of Fox News reporter James Rosen. So, what is the government supposed to do in a case like this? Should they follow this advice from Friedersdorf?
It doesn’t matter if the “stop the leaks” folks believe their cause is righteous, or even if they’re right that we’d be better off if all leaks could be stopped. They can’t be stopped. The question is how best to minimize their costs and maximize their benefits. The answer is to discourage leaks, but to tolerate it when they filter through journalists, an approach that has served the U.S. well.
I’m not even going to give the obligatory nod to the First Amendment here. It doesn’t serve our country well to tolerate leaks that burn assets who can help us avoid (potentially nuclear) war. There is not even an element of whistle-blowing in this case. The government did precisely what it was supposed to do. Nothing was served by divulging this information. It was incredibly damaging. James Rosen should be fired and never given another job where he is expected to dig up classified scoops.
This isn’t even a remotely close call.
And I think it really does damage to the credibility of the defenders of press freedom to defend this guy or to criticize the government for figuring out who his source was.
The only part of this story that is troubling at all is the news that the government treated Rosen as a possible co-conspirator. Stick to that angle, and you’ll have my sympathy. Tell me that the government has to “tolerate” leaks of this kind and I’m just going to call you an idiot.
