An interesting comment was left on Ed Morrissey’s blog last night about the NSA Wiretaps and who may be responsible for the leak:
All this speculation about whistle blowers and such….and the exempt media continues to portray these leaks about NSA somehow as Bush’s fault., or that the whistle blowers were acting under the highest most genuine of principles and concerns for the Constitution…all of it simply mind boggling.
Well, rather gthan sit back home out in the great middle of America, I decided to go to the source…headed for DC after Christmas…been an informative trip. Anyway, how is this for an informed bit of insight?
The leaks came from within NSA..
The leaks were leaked by acrtive duty military personnel within NSA..
And the rationale for the leaks had NOTHING to do with patriotism, nor even protest against the War in Iraq, or the WOT.
Picture if you will a couple active duty military officers, let’s say, Air Force officers, who were angry at the Bush Administration….angry…why?
How about an Air Force officer being found guilty of vandalism in Denver…remember that LTC who spray painted a bunch of cars that had Bush stickers on them? To pay back for having their friend, one of their own, found guilty in civilian court and facing Courts Martial for various UCMJ violations connected with this juvenile act of vandalism …deciding to embarrass Bush by releasing specially compartmented intelligence information from a special category program at NSA..and making sure that the reporter they leaked to was inculcated with the notion that the NSA intercept and monitoring (no, not wiretapping…can we stop using wiretapping in this context…please) was in violation of standing NSA regulations, (it is not) and in violation of federal law (it is not) and that the President authorized this program without consultation with the community (which is not true)…..all because one of their friends, one of their own, was punished severely for acting like a child…and they themselves, acting like spoiled petulant little kids…leaked SCI intelligence to the NYT.
The investigation is ongoing. The bigot list for this SCI progam is very short…and all indications are that the leakers were active duty officers on assignment or attached to NSA at Fort Meade….and if DOJ has its way, they’ll face federal charges…and THEN..be turned over to the military for UCMJ related charges….and under the UCMJ these leakers can face the same sort of sentence that the Rosenburgs enjoyed…
Had a wonderful week hanging out in DC…got to spend time with a number of former colleagues and a number of friends across the spectrum from military to Executive office…and this backgrounder on the NSA leaks came from a reliable source with acess whose previous reporting has been consitently deemed highly plausible or has been borne out by facts.
On the road, heading back home before the year is out….just wanted to pass this along. Should be breaking in the press within days.
Posted by: coldwarrior415 at December 31, 2005 08:07 PM
No way of telling how correct this information is but if true, WOW. They deserve a looooong jail sentence for this treason.
UPDATE
A commentor brought up the fact about timing.? The Air Force puke was defacing these stickers from Dec 04′ thru June 05′ but was only caught this last August.? The NYTs is alleging they have had the information for a year.? Now if the above tip is true, it could be these officers just corroberated information the Times already had or the Times is lying about the length of time they have had the info.? I can’t believe the Times would lie……riiiiighhhhht.
See author page
You’ve forgotten another possibility. The Times didn’t have the information that the AF guys gave them until just recently. Thus the decision to publish now.
Keep in mind, we don’t know what the Times knows or when they knew it. They may have known about an NSA program, but crucial details supplied by the AF guys filled in the blanks and made it a blockbuster story. (Or so they thought.)
Seems there’s a timing problem here isn’t there? The AF guy wasn’t even caught until after the election as I recall, and was only recently prosecuted. But, the NYTimes claims they’ve been sitting on the information for over a year.
So how could AF guy’s outraged colleagues have leaked the SCI in advance of him even being caught?