from http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/53108
Obama's Record-Setting Leak Prosecutions
by Jesselyn Radack | Daily Kos
According to the New York Times, Obama has already surpassed his secrecy-loving predecessor and every past president in prosecuting "leakers."
The problem is many so-called "leakers" are whistleblowers who attempted to protect this country by disclosing illegal conduct. What's worse for the public and the whistleblowers being criminally investigated, charged, or indicted, is that the perpetrators of the exposed illegal conduct are avoiding prosecution completely.
For a President who preaches - inconsistently at times - both "looking forward" and accountability, it is beyond hypocrisy that the Obama administration has now taken to looking backward to prosecute those former government officials who tried to expose the truth about government misconduct rather than those officials engaged in the misconduct.
The "leak" prosecutions mentioned in today's New York Times article (which include the prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake under a rarely used provision of the Espionage Act) are an obvious whistleblower deterrent:
Mr. Drake was charged in April; in May, an F.B.I. translator was sentenced to 20 months in prison for providing classified documents to a blogger; this week, the Pentagon confirmed the arrest of a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst suspected of passing a classified video of an American military helicopter shooting Baghdad civilians to the Web site Wikileaks.org. Read more.
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