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NYT: Leaking of National Security Secrets is "Patriotic"

Stunningly, up until now, the NYT has failed to notice any Constitutional violations by this administration. The extorting of $20 billion from BP following the Gulf Oil disaster, when we have a legal system to manage reparations; the administration's defiance of numerous court orders to issue drilling permits, the inclusion of clauses in both the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Act that eliminate due process for private citizens all seem to be Constitutionally acceptable to the 'paper of record'.   Leaking national security secrets is another matter.  DTeam

BY starting a criminal investigation of journalistic exposures of White House secrets, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is not merely threatening traditional press freedoms. He is trying to make it a crime to alert the public to secret presidential violations of the Constitution — greatly increasing the future risk of illegal executive action.

The government’s system of classified information is entirely the product of presidential orders. Congress has never passed a general statute making unauthorized leaks a crime. Instead, the Justice Department is relying on relatively narrow provisions of the Espionage Act of 1917, which punishes leakers only if they “knowingly and willfully” pass on information that hurts the country or helps a foreign power “to the detriment of the United States.”

The Espionage Act was at the center of the Pentagon Papers case, decided in 1971. While the Supreme Court famously struck down the government’s effort to enjoin The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing military secrets, the justices upheld the constitutionality of post-publication prosecutions. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the papers, and an associate were tried under the statute, but the judge declared a mistrial, so the case never got to the jury.  Read more.

 




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