Insty link to NYT. Blocked for subscribers. nonewsforyou! grrrrrrr here.
Where NYT damages itself in my reading. I keep getting more annoyed as I go, mostly because the information is good and because NYT is part of the problem it reports on. It spookily writes about itself. The writer says Bush did not pursue investigations into leaking so much because the administration knew it would face political pressure it did not care to expend political capital to pursue. 153 cases brought, 0 indictments.
NYT would have be the political pressure that Bush would experience and that Obama would not. Here is where it is annoyingly writing about itself without writing about itself directly. It is very important that NYT does not put the same pressure on Obama that it did on Bush. I believe this to be obvious fact. This is what pisses off neutral observers. This is what is impossible for neutral observers to get Democrat partisans to acknowledge or fully appreciate. They dismiss it offhand, and insist you are a partisan Republican for pointing it out. Never mind your pox on both houses attitude you are honorary Republican if you get anything at all off Fox even muted.
That is the other thing in the piece. Another investigation mentioned because one of the leaks caused Fox viewers to know about a Kim internal dialogue hours after a high level secret memo mentioned it. Officials are angered because the leak led to Fox viewers learning so fast about Kim's intent to fire a test missile. Better for Fox viewers to be uninformed as everyone else as long as possible or convenient for the administration. In National security terms I am sure that is so, but it also sure does stick out.
If you are for prosecuting leakers of national security secrets, and against prosecuting leakers of political secrets how do you tell the difference when they are intertwined? I'm not sure that is possible. So prosecute away. It's what we do. It's who we are.
I read that in a spy novel. Sounded good. Probably John Le Carré, the Russian spy character said that to another, it is what Americans do, investigate each other all the time. I was little kid at the time and I thought, wow, that's very insightful thing for a Russian to make about us, oh wait Le Carré is British.
These are all important investigations, I do not dismiss any of them, none of them look good and all of them that I know about bear on trust, rapidly alarmingly eroding trust in government so clamping down on leakers as this administration is doing in my view is a good thing and Washington altogether should be nice and squeaky tight by the time the next Republican administration rolls in. Whereupon BLAM 10,000 immediate spilling leaks will flow directly to NYT and a hostile aggressive media blossom once again and the tensioned balance of Maat restored throughout the land.
Bush did disappoint in pursuing leakers and it is the usual oddness of reading NYT, the place that would squeal loudest and longest and most persistently, daily, to the ground and to death had he done so.
