Plugging Leaks, Chilling Debate

[norml]

Plugging Leaks, Chilling Debate

By Gary Wasserman
Thursday, February 16, 2006; Page A27

"Persons who have unauthorized possession, who come into unauthorized possession of classified information, must abide by the law. That applies to academics, lawyers, journalists, professors, whatever."

-- Judge T.S. Ellis III


The judge was speaking last month after sentencing a former Pentagon desk officer for Iran to prison for sharing classified information too widely. It didn't seem to matter that Lawrence Franklin was a conservative former Air Force colonel who was using contacts outside of government to lobby for a harder line on Iran. In a week when an American soldier was given no more than a reprimand for smothering an Iraqi general to death, Franklin's 12 1/2 -year sentence was a reminder that this is an administration more horrified by leaks than torture.

The judge's comments were directed to a related trial that he will oversee on April 25 of two former staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. They face the possibility of 10 years in prison for allegedly having classified information verbally leaked by Franklin and others and passing it along to reporters and diplomats.

Not content with jailing an employee for mishandling classified material, the government is applying to private citizens a never-used part of the 1917 Espionage Act. Its expanding secrecy powers threaten to paralyze public participation in making foreign policy. The experts, lobbyists and journalists who, in the normal routines of their jobs, discuss confidential information could now become criminals.

No one disputes that verbal leaks occurred; two years of FBI wiretaps on AIPAC recorded them. But despite all this wiretap evidence, the government felt it necessary to add a "sting" operation, which was engineered with Franklin's help in the summer of 2004. Having "flipped" Franklin after finding confidential documents that he had carelessly brought home to work on, the government had him call the AIPAC lobbyists -- whom he hadn't spoken to in a year -- on a supposedly life-or-death matter. He claimed that Iran was planning to kidnap and kill Americans and Israelis working in Iraq. Franklin said he wanted to warn the White House, something that he, as a mid-level analyst, didn't have the clout to do himself.


snip


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502004.html

[babylonsister]

1. Adding this thread, and looking for one of my own:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=414486