Originally Posted by
wiggin
While in principle I agree with you that there is an important distinction, I think Greenwald and others have a point in that leakers during the Obama years were pursued in an unprecedented manner for a variety of offenses - both grave and not-so-grave - and that the rhetoric surrounding such actions was not couched in such shaded arguments.
I think a better argument should be that people should always feel conflicted about leaks that appear to be done on ideological, rather than commercial, grounds. If we share the general concerns of the leaker (Trump's relationship with Russia, US conduct of wars overseas, US surveillance programs and their potential for unconstutitutional/illegal behavior), we should feel that throwing the book at them is not the obvious, unambiguous response. There needs to be a careful evaluation of whether their motives were appropriate, whether they released information in a responsible manner, and what damage was done to national security as a result of the leak. I think the big argument against Snowden is that his motives may or may not have been good, but the information was released in an entirely inappropriate manner, including (probably) a great deal of information that was provided to Russian (and Chinese?) intelligence but not released to the public. This is deeply damaging to national security but provides little in the way of a public good. Manning is a somewhat better case (and obviously Obama agreed, to an extent), though the damage is by no means minimal. The damage to national security from revealing the existence of conversations between Flynn and Russian agents/diplomats and very modest information about their contents is, on the face of it, quite small. (One could, of course, argue that the gravity of the revelations regarding mass surveillance of Americans outweighed the gravity of the Flynn-Russia connections as well.)
Even so, I am deeply troubled by the precedent of elements of the intelligence community appearing to actively conspire against the lawfully elected executive power of the United States. I recall some mention by a poster here earlier (LF?) suggesting that to an extent this always happens, with the intelligence community acting to preserve their position and power against an encroaching administration, but I think whether this is unprecedented or not, it's deeply concerning. They have no properly constituted power to act against elected officials, and this worries me - whether they be NSA contractors or whoever leaked the Flynn data.
I understand the concept of the press being a 'fourth estate', if you will - they are a constitutionally protected group that is clearly designed to act as a check on power in the US, just as Congress and SCOTUS are explicitly expected to check executive power. Yet the intelligence community hardly rises to this standard, and their use of their extraordinary power and resources to do anything other follow the legal orders of the executive is problematic. Quasi-independent intelligence fiefdoms have spelled great danger to the freedom of other societies, and even though the current revelation appears to be approximately public-spirited, I am still concerned by the precedent.
Does this mean that I wouldn't choose to leak the information of any of these circumstances were I in a similar position? Not necessarily, though I hope I would take care to limit the leak to the minimum needed to convey the important information. But I think leakers - especially if they are in our intelligence community - should be prepared to face the consequences of their (generally illegal) actions. Even if they are themselves exposing illegal (or at least unwise) behavior, we cannot condone the methods of rogue intelligence agents. Power is vested in the executive to control this for a reason.
