The Danger of Suppressing the Leaks
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/public-editor/the-danger-of-suppressing-the-leaks.html?_r=0
Declan Walsh, a reporter who wrote many WikiLeaks-based stories for The Guardian before coming to The Times, calls leaks “the unfiltered lifeblood of investigative journalism.” He wrote in an e-mail from his post in Pakistan: “They may come from difficult, even compromised sources, be ridden with impurities and require careful handling to produce an accurate story. None of that reduces their importance to journalism.”
Readers whom I hear from on this topic tend to express one of two opposite viewpoints: 1) The Times should relentlessly find out and print whatever it can about clandestine government activities, and 2) The Times has no business determining what is in the best interest of national security, or pursuing classified information that is passed along illegally.
Whatever one’s view, one fact is clear: Leakers are being prosecuted and punished like never before. Consider that the federal Espionage Act, passed in 1917, was used only three times in its first 92 years to prosecute government officials for press leaks. But the Obama administration, in the president’s first term alone, used it six times to go after leakers. Now some of them have gone to jail.
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Many observers, though, see a useful middle ground. “This is often looked at as a battle of good versus evil, and both sides see it that way,” Mr. Hayden said. “But that’s not the case.” He believes that for a national security effort to succeed, it must not only be “operationally effective, technologically possible and lawful,” it must also be “politically sustainable.” The latter requires public support, he said, “which is only shaped by informed debate.” You can’t have debate without knowledge, and given the growing penchant for overclassification, that’s where the press steps in.