by Ben Shapiro
THE CHARGES
The Obama administration violated the Espionage Act in its gunrunning activities in Libya and Syria, which resulted in the deaths of Americans. But it has repeatedly and undoubtedly violated the Espionage Act, which includes 18 U.S. Code § 793, in its leaks of information. The relevant provision of the Espionage Act was edited in 1950 to remove intent as an element of the crime—even retention of classified information could be a crime.
But even had the act not been altered, the Obama administration would be guilty of repeatedly and routinely violating it. Never has there been a more selectively leaky administration. And by the same token, never has an administration been so aggressive in targeting leakers of information that make it look bad.
TARGETING THE “ENEMY” LEAKERS: JAMES ROSEN
The Obama administration is quite brutal with leakers that it believes harm its political interests. Aside from targeting Fast and Furious whistle-blowers, silencing would-be Benghazi witnesses, and attempting to delegitimize the reporters who cover them, the Obama administration aggressively monitors and prosecutes anyone it suspects of working with the press to undermine its preferred policies. So even as Joe Biden was shooting his mouth off and putting Navy SEALs squarely in the crosshairs, the Obama administration launched the greatest crackdown on leaks in American history.
In 2009, the Justice Department started investigating reports from Fox News’ James Rosen about North Korea. Rosen reported in June 2009 that North Korea would likely respond to UN action against it by speeding up nuclear testing. Rosen attributed that information to sources within the CIA. Soon the Obama administration tracked down the man they believed was the source of the leak: Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a State Department security adviser. But the administration didn’t stop there: it obtained phone records for Rosen, used his security badge to track his ins and outs at the State Department, backtracked his calls with Kim, and got a secret warrant to check out Rosen’s personal emails. Kim’s lawyer accused the Obama administration of using “20 [telephone] lines and months of records with no obvious attempt to be targeted or narrow.”
The lawyer spoke truthfully. FBI investigators’ evidence against Kim included specific information about Rosen’s movements. Rosen used his Google email account, and asked that his source send code to pass along information: “One asterisk means to contact them, or that previously suggested plans for communication are to proceed as agreed,” the FBI reported; “two asterisks means the opposite.” The Washington Post, which broke the story about the administration’s targeting of Rosen, pointed out the outrageous nature of such monitoring: “No reporter, including Rosen, has been prosecuted [for soliciting information].”8
So how exactly did the surveillance get cleared by a court? The Justice Department labeled a potential “co-conspirator” in its filings. That’s right: a journalist doing his job ended up as a possible co-conspirator in espionage, according to the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration lied about its blatant violation of First Amendment principles. Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying before Congress in May 2013, stated, “With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material: that is not something I’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.”9 Only one problem: Holder personally signed off on the warrant request for Rosen’s information. According to a Justice Department official leaking to NBC News, “After extensive deliberations, and after following all applicable laws, regulations and policies, the Department sought an appropriately tailored search warrant under the Privacy Protection Act. And a federal magistrate judge made an independent finding that probable cause existed to approve the warrant.”10 Not just that: the department even went so far as to request that the warrant against Rosen be kept a secret so it could monitor him more completely.11 Bret Baier of Fox News reported that Rosen’s parents’ phone records were pulled by the Justice Department as well.12
Holder gave a pricelessly Clintonian response to his perjury: “I do not agree that characterizations establishing probable cause for a search warrant for materials from a member of the news media during an ongoing investigation constitute an intent to prosecute that member of the news media,” he wrote to Congress. “I do believe that a thorough investigation of the disclosure of classified information that threatened national security was necessary and appropriate.” In other words, the department could claim someone might be prosecuted, but that didn’t mean they might be prosecuted. Or something.13
This was clearly an act of perjury. And it was perjury required by the Obama administration in order to cover up its targeting of journalists who didn’t parrot the party line.
TARGETING THE “ENEMY” LEAKERS: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Obama administration didn’t merely target Rosen. It went after the entire Associated Press after the AP’s May 7, 2012, report about a barely foiled terror plot based in Yemen to blow up a U.S.-bound airplane. The report noted the attack came close to fruition, even though White House officials told the American public that terrorist organizations were not threatening activity at the time. In the midst of the president’s reelection campaign, the last thing the Obama White House wanted was a story about al-Qaeda’s continuing threat to the security of the country. After all, al-Qaeda was supposed to be on the run. As Carney said, “We have no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.”14
The AP piece blew that lie wide open. That angered the Obama White House. CIA director John Brennan called the report an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”15
But was it? As it turns out, the Obama administration knew full well that the AP planned to publish information on the thwarted Yemen plot. Actually, the Obama administration worked with the AP in planning release of the story. The White House wanted to put some spin on the Yemen story, and asked the Associated Press to delay publication of its story for several days. The AP agreed, on the condition that they would have a one-hour exclusive. But when the White House refused to allow that, the AP ran with the story.
Immediately, truly crucial leaks began—from the White House itself. Reuters reported that Brennan briefed members of the press about the Yemen plot early on the evening of May 7. He said that the plot didn’t threaten American safety because the Obama administration had “inside control” of the plot. That information was crucial, and Brennan leaked it directly to the press. As Reuters reported, “Brennan’s comment appears unintentionally to have helped lead to disclosure of the secret at the heart of a joint U.S.-British-Saudi undercover counter-terrorism operation.” The leak killed the undercover operation. But it didn’t kill White House ire at the AP. The White House quickly released a statement blaming AP rather than Brennan for the leak: “The egregious leak here was to the Associated Press. The White House fought to prevent this information from being reported and ultimately worked to delay its publication for operational security reasons. No one is more upset than us about this disclosure, and we support efforts to prevent leaks like this which harm our national security.” But as Reuters pointed out, the AP report didn’t have any information of an undercover informant or Washington control over the operation.16 Brennan’s own lame explanation for how his leaks didn’t matter, but the AP’s did: “Once someone leaked information about interdiction of the IED and that the IED was actually in our possession, it was imperative to inform the American people consistent with government policy that there was never any danger to the American people associated with this al-Qaida plot.”17
That didn’t stop the Obama administration from going full bore in its attempt to crack down on those rogue reporters at the AP. One year later, AP reported that the Justice Department had “secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘massive and unpreced
ented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.” Among other information grabbed by the department: outgoing calls for work and personal phone numbers of reporters, and records of more than twenty telephone lines used by more than one hundred reporters. AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt sent a letter to Holder blasting the Justice Department’s violations of the First Amendment: “There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”
The Justice Department gave no reason for the seizure of records in notifying the AP that it had grabbed the information. AP noted, “The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of providing classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.”
The Obama administration violated federal law in grabbing AP’s records in such heavy-handed fashion. As Nate Cardozo of the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated, “The DOJ’s regulations prohibit subpoenas of this breadth and require that notice be given to the affected people within 90 days at the absolute outside.” Other reporters said that sources had been chilled by the reports of the department’s targeting.18
As usual, the White House claimed it had no clue what its right hand was doing at Justice. “We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department,” said Jay Carney.19 President Obama himself claimed ignorance, as per the usual arrangement, in which the head of the executive branch knew nothing about the internal workings of the executive branch. The president, said Carney, “found out about the news reports yesterday on the road.”20
SOME LEAKERS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
But not all leakers are created equal for the Obama administration. Some leaks that obviously violate America’s national security interests receive no blowback whatsoever from the White House—so long as those leaks help the political interests of one Barack Obama.
On August 3, 2013, President Obama ordered that twenty-two U.S. embassies and consulates throughout the world close in anticipation of potential terrorist activity from al-Qaeda.21 The blowback came quickly, with Republicans demanding an explanation from the Obama administration as to why, if al-Qaeda had been largely defanged, as the Obama administration claimed, America had cut and run with regard to sovereign United States territory. Some Republicans also suggested that the Obama administration had played up the global threat in an attempt to justify unprecedented government spying on American citizens via the National Security Agency.
None of that sat right with the image-conscious Obama White House. And thus, on August 7, 2013, Eli Lake and Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast reported that the embassy closures had been provoked not by vague threats by al-Qaeda, but by a highly specific piece of intelligence information: a tapped conference call between al-Qaeda leaders. “The intercept provided the U.S. intelligence community with a rare glimpse into how al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, manages a global organization that includes affiliates in Africa, the Middle East, and southwest and southeast Asia,” the reporters wrote. “[T]he conference call provided a new sense of urgency for the U.S. government, the sources said.”
Wasn’t this a crucial national security leak? According to the reporters, of course not—original reports suggesting that communications had been intercepted had already blown the administration’s cover.22 But when CNN reported the initial “intercepted message among senior al Qaeda operatives,” it added that “CNN has agreed to a request from an Obama administration official not to publish or broadcast additional details because of the sensitivity of the information.” The Daily Beast’s big scoop went far beyond the details exposed by CNN.23
And the leaks continued. On August 14, the Associated Press, citing three “intelligence officials,” broke the news that the administration had been charting chat rooms and Internet message boards for al-Qaeda communications. The AP report explicitly linked the al-Qaeda communications to the Obama administration’s call for even broader Internet surveillance powers: “Exactly how U.S. spy systems picked up the latest threat is classified. . . . Intelligence officials have suggested that the plot was detected, in part at least, through NSA surveillance programs that have been under harsh worldwide criticism for privacy intrusions in the name of national security.”24
Vital American security information was breaking across the country every single day. Yet, oddly, CNN, the Daily Beast, and AP received zero harsh words from the Obama administration over these leaks.
How odd. How convenient.
And how perfectly consistent with past Obama administration orchestrated leaks. On May 29, 2012, the New York Times reported that the Obama White House had a “kill list” designed to allow the president to determine whom among al-Qaeda suspects to take out.25 As Greg McNeal of Forbes pointed out, the story clearly sprang from the White House, given that the Times sourced it to “three dozen” current and former Obama administration officials. Obama gave a quote to the Times on this critical national security information. So did Thomas Donilon, the national security advisor; Bill Daley, the former chief of staff; Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence; and Brennan. All of the quotes from administration officials make Obama look like a tough cowboy, just in time for the 2012 election. “He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” Donilon told the Times. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.”26
These leaks were so bad that even Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a quasi-hawkish Obama administration ally, blasted them: “It’s dismayed our allies. It puts American lives in jeopardy. It puts our nation’s security in jeopardy.”27 But, more important, it helped Obama look tough—which, to Obama, was all that mattered.
When confronted about the leak of the kill list, Obama put on his righteous-indignation face. “The notion that my White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive,” he blustered during a press conference. “It’s wrong, and people I think need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how people around here approach this office.”28
The problem for Obama is that the American people were quite aware of how he approached his office: as a public relations full-time spin zone. And in violation of law designed to protect American classified information.
While Obama has deployed his leak machine to great effect in an attempt to bolster his national security credentials, he has saved his greatest leaks to target America’s only true ally in the Middle East: Israel.
THE ISRAEL LEAKS
President Obama’s relationship with Israel began in ugly fashion. After years of associating with anti-Semites like Jeremiah Wright (“Them Jews ain’t going to let him talk to me,” Wright said of the likelihood of speaking to Obama after his election),29 Bill Ayers (“The Zionist state is clearly the aggressor, the source of violence and war in the Mideast, the occupier of stolen lands. . . . It is racist and expansionist—the enemy of the Palestinians, the Arab people, and the Jewish people”),30 Rashid Khalidi (former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman), and Derrick Bell (“Jewish neoconservative racists . . . are undermining blacks in every way they can”),31 President Obama attempted to mend fences with the American Jewish community by placating them at the 2008 American-Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference. The day after winning the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama took to the podium at AIPAC, where he stated, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The crowd d
uly applauded.
The next day, Obama walked it back.32
Obama’s actions spoke louder than his words. He quickly staffed up his campaign with a notorious bunch of anti-Israel career politicians, including:
• Samantha Power, who once suggested that America place troops on the ground in Israel to prevent “human rights abuses” by the Israelis against the Palestinians;
• Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Jimmy Carter national security advisor who defended Carter’s anti-Semitic diatribe Peace, Not Apartheid;
• General Merrill McPeak, Obama’s campaign cochair, who said that the Jewish lobby based in “New York City, Miami,” controlled American foreign policy;
• Robert Malley, who served on the Obama campaign until the media discovered his secret meetings with Hamas.33
Nonetheless, Obama was elected with 78 percent of the Jewish vote.
Once elected, Obama proceeded to use his power to stifle Israel’s ability to defend itself against the imminent nuclear development of the Iranian regime. Obama had stated during the campaign of 2008 that he would negotiate with Iran without preconditions. Now he made it clear that he would not support any Israeli action against Iran. In July 2009, within weeks of the Iranians shooting protesters in the streets, Obama told CNN that the United States was “absolutely not” giving Israel the green light to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. “We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East,” Obama said.34 Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to maintain that Iran was a threat to Israeli existence, and reserved the right to defend his country.
In June 2010, as concerns rose from the Obama administration over the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, an unnamed “U.S. defense source” told the Times of London that Israel had cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to use Saudi airspace to launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “To ensure the Israeli bombers pass without hindrance,” the Times said, “Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defense systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defenses will return to full alert.”35
