Barack Obama v. Thomas Jefferson: The Obama Admin's unprecedented crackdown on leaks.

[Karmadillo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/politics/18leak.html?_r=1

WASHINGTON — Stephen J. Kim, an arms expert who immigrated from South Korea as a child, spent a decade briefing top government officials on the dangers posed by North Korea. Then last August he was charged with violating the Espionage Act — not by aiding some foreign adversary, but by revealing classified information to a Fox News reporter.

Mr. Kim’s case is next in line in the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on leaks, after the crumbling last week of the case against a former National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake. Accused of giving secrets to The Baltimore Sun, Mr. Drake pleaded guilty to a minor charge and will serve no prison time and pay no fine.

The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather than those who leak them.

The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods.

more...

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/18/libya/index.html

Obama rejects top lawyers' legal views on Libya
By Glenn Greenwald

<edit>

UPDATE: Also in The New York Times this morning, Scott Shane describes the still-escalating war on whistleblowers being waged by the Obama administration, including the press-freedom-threatening prosecution of WikiLeaks. As sysprog astutely observes in comments: "if the Administration and Congress are successful in squelching the publication of secrets, that may prevent future scoops like today's by Charlie Savage."

That, of course, is precisely the point of this war: to suffocate one of the only remaining avenues for learning what the government actually does, as opposed to what they want the public to believe they do. As Thomas Jefferson long ago observed: avenues of disclosure are "the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

[polichick]

1. This issue is one of the creepiest things about the current "transparency" administration. k&r

[Wilms]

2. Creepy is right. I just can't understand why this is happening.

Obama: Transparency Will Be Touchstone (January 21, 2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72g7qmeP1dE

[polichick]

7. It's hard to know whether the prez is a wolf in sheep's clothing or a tool in someone else's game.

[amborin]

8. or both

even as a tool, he's got to be cognizant of this, right?

[polichick]

9. True, but it's possible he didn't go into it with this agenda in mind...

He did, however, choose a cabinet filled with corporate gatekeepers - unless someone else picked them.

[amborin]

10. yet,

how far back must one search for supposedly innocent beginnings?

he did praise Reagan; was that as early as the primaries? or the campaign?

[polichick]

12. I think those comments about Reagan were during the primaries...

I recall being very uncomfortable about that and wondering what he meant by being transformative like Reagan - was he referring to Reagan's policies or to reversing those policies.

It's creepy the way Obama keeps even his supporters guessing - so you never know where he stands.

[amborin]

13. why not choose FDR as one's transformative role model?

don't you think we all know where he stands?

except the most myopic sycophants and payees

[polichick]

14. Good point - maybe he's purposely impossible to pin down.

[Brianboru]

3. avenues of disclosure are "the first shut up by those who fear

the investigation of their actions."

I guess transparent means you can't see through it.

[gateley]

4. I didn't even want to read it - subject line made me feel queasy.

It's gotten that so many things are happening with this administration that keep our rights in lockup, or even, as in this instance, go even further, that I'm frequently at a loss to understand WTF is going on and WHO the fuck is convincing Obama that this crap is good for the country. :(

[ProgressIn2008]

5. Do we care about this kind of things anymore? Soooo 2006. nt

[Karmadillo]

15. Exactly right. We need forward looking, not backwards looking transparency.

nt

[Angry Dragon]

6. He did promise transparency

Just not the kind you were expecting

[somone]

11. And the Orwellian nightmare continues unabated

[Karmadillo]

16. Kick

nt

[OnyxCollie]

17. Kick. nt

[ProSense]

18. What a weird article

From the OP:

"The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined."

How many were under Bush? Obama is obvioulsly worse on this issue than all other Presidents. Three?

Also from the OP:

<...>

Arriving with his family from Seoul and settling in the Bronx at the age of 8, Mr. Kim excelled academically, earning degrees from Georgetown and Harvard and a doctorate from Yale. He worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Defense Department and the State Department, focusing on North Korea?s weapons programs and briefing then-Vice President Dick Cheney, among others.

?I had the highest regard for him,? said Paula A. DeSutter, Mr. Kim?s boss when she was an assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration. ?He had native Korean language and he?d been doing this work forever.?

<...>

Anyone suspect that this is a bullshit piece yet?

[kenny blankenship]

19. And Juan Cole should still expect the FBI-CIA-NSA to rummage through his trash and (e)mail

looking for something to "get him" with.