NY Times and intelligence leaks

[Alex]

Do we agree that there exists a need for our government to be able to classify information for the benefit of the country?

If you don't agree with that statement then obviously a newspaper can never be wrong in revealing any classified information that comes into its possession.

However, if there is a value to the government being able to hide certain information then who decides when it is ok to break that veil?

If CNN had learned the details our attack on Zarqawi and hour before it happened and went on the air spilling all of the details. Would that be right? After all, I too like to know things. Do I have the right to know that my government is about to commit a targetted killing?

Obviously that leak is not the same thing as this leak, it is just to probe whether you think there is ever information that the press could come to possess that it should not divulge.

I'm guessing that nobody is at either extreme on this issue. That nobody thinks either that the government is absolute in its right to determine the secrets to be kept (I have no problem with the publication of the Pentagon Papers) or that the government has zero right to decide that some information need be kept secret.

So then we're just haggling over where the line is, not whether there is actually a line. For me, I am uncomfortable with the decision being solely in the hands of three people in a New York City highrise in personal political opposition to the person they are reporting on. This is a situation where there is no claim that a law is being broken (as can be claimed with the domestic call monitoring) or even that there has been a change in legal methods.

As I said earlier in this thread, I am of an overall position that what the Times did is a cost of allowing the press to generally be free. However, it is comical to watch people engage in the synchronized dance of hypocrisy on the issue of leak punishment (where people take equal and opposite positions on the issue depending on whether the specific case fits their worldview of which party is evil). But that doesn't mean they aren't bad people.

And GC, I have no doubt at all that they are trying to find out who leaked the information.