Our nation is leaking its secrets like a sieve

Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” contains remarkable revelations about the inner workings of the administration’s national security team and the development of its policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Equally remarkable is how much classified information is in these revelations — so much classified information, in fact, that it calls into question the legitimacy of the presidential secrecy system. 

The fireworks begin in Chapter 1, which recounts President Obama’s post-election intelligence briefing from Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence in the Bush administration. Several highly classified programs and their code names are described. Subsequent chapters reveal classified reports, memorandums, conversations, programs, meetings and the like.

. . . .Government employees pledge not to disclose classified information, and breaches of the agreement can be enforceable by civil or criminal sanctions. Some senior national security officials can declassify information or delegate in writing the authority to declassify. It is conceivable that these officials declassified some of the information given to Woodward, but it is hard to imagine that they declassified most or all of it.

. . . . Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently criticized leakers of classified information, saying that President Obama had expressed “great angst” about the bevy of leaks surrounding reported terrorist threats in Europe. Such messages are weakened, however, by the seemingly opportunistic top-level leaking reflected in Woodward’s book.

The problem is not just hypocrisy. Classified disclosures from people near the top indicate a lack of seriousness about national security secrecy that inevitably influences the respect that lower-level officials give security classifications in their discussions with journalists.

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