At the recent confirmation hearings for Dennis Blair for the post of Director of National Intelligence, Bond pressed the nominee on whether he would try to prosecute leakers of classified information. Blair passed Bond's test: "If I could ever catch one of those [leakers], it would be very good to prosecute them; we need to make sure that people who leak are held accountable," said Blair
It is a measure of what Washington has become that there is bipartisan consensus on the need to prosecute leakers but not torturers.
Panetta, Blair, and others may wish to consider this: had there been some real teeth in whistleblower protection for members of national security agencies, chances would have increased that some courageous soul would have come forward and exposed the lies that led to catastrophe in Iraq—and might conceivably have headed it off. Perhaps most would now agree that this kind of person would truly merit a Medal of Freedom—not an orange jumpsuit.
A shorter version of this article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.
