Is this really the worst time ever to be a journalist covering national security issues, especially in Washington?
Josh Meyer
Maybe the best way to describe it is to quote Charles Dickens from his A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’’
It’s the best of times because of all the great and important news out there to cover. Two wars are winding down but the costs of them – in terms of blood and treasure – are still staggering, and there is a desperate need to ask tough questions about where we’re going and how we got here.
In Barack Obama, we have a president who got elected on a campaign of overturning most of the perceived civil liberties excesses of the Bush administration, but who has become, in many ways, even more hawkish and willing to embrace the `”war on terrorism’’ paradigm and all it entails, including drone strikes to kill Americans overseas.
The looming confrontation with Iran is another great story and one that is in the public interest, including the mysterious cyberattacks against its illicit nuclear program that reportedly are the handiwork of the U.S. government, Israel or both. So is the heart-rending saga of U.S. troops and Reserve Component members coming home from war, often after multiple tours of duty, with broken bodies and minds, only to be mired in red tape and a hodgepodge in adequate programs and protections.
Army Private Bradley Manning faces life in prison for giving vast caches of State Department cables and other classified materials to Wikileaks. Nine years after his capture, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may finally go on trial before a Guantanamo military commission that gets more controversial by the day. And of course, not only is Al Qaeda still out there trying to blow up Americans here and overseas, we now have Hezbollah to worry about, along with an increasingly scary number of U.S.-based “lone wolf’’ militants and right-wing hate groups.
Washington these days should be a candy store for reporters covering national security, whether they actually live here or cover the issues from their local community. There’s even a November election to spice everything up.
Worst of times?
So why is everyone in the media complaining? Because by all accounts, the Obama administration and Congress have made it virtually impossible for them to do their jobs.
At the behest of Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., two of the nation’s most prominent U.S. attorneys are spearheading aggressive criminal investigations into the sources of leaks about many of the stories mentioned above.
As the New York Times’ Scott Shane notes in an excellent Aug. 1 story, “F.B.I. agents on a hunt for leakers have interviewed current and former high-level government officials from multiple agencies in recent weeks, casting a distinct chill over press coverage of national security issues as agencies decline routine interview requests and refuse to provide background briefings.’’
Shane, one of the best national security reporters in Washington, should know.
Earlier this year, he popped up in one of those investigations when the Justice Department filed criminal charges against former CIA case officer John Kiriakou for allegedly disclosing classified information to three reporters. Shane, identified in court documents as “Journalist B’’ of the New York Times, allegedly used Kiriakou as a source for an article on the interrogation of Mohammed. Kiriakou faces 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts, even though former top CIA official Jose Rodriguez has been on the talk circuit for months promoting his book, “Hard Measures,’’ that discusses many of the same issues.
As Shane and other media watchers have noted, the current criminal investigation has reached into the White House, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the C.I.A., and seems to be the most sweeping inquiry into intelligence disclosures in many years.
NYT Editor: ‘Environment never tougher’
The Times’ executive editor, Jill Abramson, said in a June keynote address at the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference that many of her most veteran reporters say “the environment has never been tougher or information harder to dislodge.’’
According to a Boston Globe story on the speech, Abramson said the Obama administration has mounted six prosecutions involving leaks under the 1917 Espionage Act, double the number under all previous administrations combined.
“The United States has never had an official secrets act,’’ she said. “This would be antithetical to our democratic values. But it seems time to me to ask whether a once obscure espionage law from long ago is now being used to substitute for one.’’
That very issue came up last weekend when I participated in the “media panel” at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering of prominent national security and military officials.
Moderator Clark Bell of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation summarized the current — and frosty — relationship between journalists and the national security institutions they cover by citing earlier comments by Admiral William McRaven, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. (The McCormick Foundation is the major sponsor of Medill National Security Journalism Initiative).
McRaven
McRaven suggested that national security information should be far more judiciously parceled out to journalists—and only on a “need to know’’ basis.
“But what about the public’s right [itals] to know?’’ Bell asked, rhetorically.
Looking to the panel of journalists, Bell added, “How are we going to make these decisions about access, accountability and the free flow of information?’’
‘Virtually impossible’ to get sources to talk
For more than an hour, the four panelists explained what we do, why we do it and how we do it, especially in the face of so many reporting challenges and investigations. We agreed that, indeed, it has become virtually impossible to get anyone in Washington (and Afghanistan and elsewhere) to talk without the risk of it triggering a leak investigation.
Perhaps most importantly, we talked about how many of the stories that have sparked the crackdown by the White House and Congress fall solidly into the category of “public service’’ journalism that should be celebrated, not investigated. The list includes the increasing use of drones to carry out targeted killings and the ill-defined new frontiers of government-sponsored cyber-warfare.
Sadly, we journalists seem to be in the minority on this front.
Recently, Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress have called for even more aggressive leak investigations, including the appointment of a special prosecutor. The Senate is also considering new legislation that would place unprecedented restrictions on intelligence officials’ exchanges with reporters and deprive the public of important “background’’ information on how the government is handling current and future national security threats.
For a good primer on that and other scary new developments, check out ProPublica’s “Washington’s War on Leaks, Explained.”
Issue becoming more politicized
And now that the election draws near, the issue is becoming even more politicized. As always, that is to the benefit of no one.
GOP challenger Mitt Romney accuses Obama of being behind some of the leaks, in an effort to bolster his national security credentials. Team Obama is responding by showing just how hard it can be on reporters, even those who are merely seeking answers to these important questions.
The longer version of Dickens’ famous passage from A Tale of Two Cities appears oddly prescient in describing the nature of the relationship between the media and those it covers in Washington these days.
I’d say Dickens was summing up the polarization in Washington fairly accurately. And the losers are the American public, who as a result are learning less and less about what their government is doing in the name of protecting them, at the very time when the world is getting more and more precarious.
