My letter to editor in Joliet Herald

[Wink]

Leaks cause accountability


Some members of the Republican Party and their supporters in the media (including the ones not directly paid for by the GOP) are in an uproar about recent security leaks to the press concerning our intelligence community's activities, namely, the published information about U.S.-run secret prisons in Eastern Europe and the president's authorization to illegally wiretap the phones of U.S. citizens. These are the same people who didn't give a spit that the vice president's office leaked, for personal revenge, the identity of a covert CIA operative, thus exposing all of her previous missions and overseas contacts. But, now suddenly they want criminal prosecution for leaks, not for the actual crimes committed by these agencies or by the president himself — just for the leakers. Go figure.
Of course, we wouldn't want most of what our intelligence community does leaked to the press but in these two most recent cases I can only applaud whoever gave up that info. Our country is supposed to represent a free and open democracy. Our president — our pro-torture president, by the way — isn't supposed to be authorizing illegal wiretaps or running illegal jails (in foreign countries to boot). Didn't we just go to war supposedly to stop dictatorial behavior?

The media's exposure of the secret prisons in Europe may very well keep us, or at least delay us, from running them in the future. Good. We shouldn't be doing that anyway. That's what the bad guys do. And the tapping of our citizens' phones, if need be, can still be done legally, as was the case before the president gave the go-ahead on the illegal tapping. We have a legal process with a secret court that already provides for these types of activities. The president just chose to not follow this legal process. So despite all that Republican hyperventilating about the damage these leaks may have caused, no damage whatsoever was done to our nation's security. It merely damaged the prestige of the Bush administration by exposing its illegal activities. The taps will continue ... legally and hopefully we won't be running any more KGB-type prisons in foreign countries.

Paul Winkelmann

Romeoville

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/opinions/letters/4_4_JO04_LETTERS_S1.htm

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. Good letter

One slight quibble, though: many are calling the people who alerted us to Bush's illegal activities whistle blowers rather than leakers. I hope your letter gets people thinking-and convinces many to stop supporting Bush.

[Oceansaway]

2. Touche !!..n/t

[Ilsa]

3. Great letter! And you made your points without the typical

name-calling I see in pro-Bush* letters in our own newspaper.

[beltanefauve]

4. Nice going!

Thanks for your public service!