White House leak investigation

President Obama has denied allegations that his administration deliberately leaked national security secrets to the media, and was forced last week to ask Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a thorough investigation. Republicans accused the White House of feeding detailed, classified information to reporters at The New York Times about how the president personally approves drone attacks on terrorists on a CIA “kill list,” and about U.S.-Israeli cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear program. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said the disclosures were intended to “enhance the president’s image.” But Obama said it was “offensive�� to suggest the leaks were deliberate. “If we can root out folks who have leaked, they will suffer consequences,” he said.

Obama’s denials are implausible, said Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com. The Times’ “kill list” story, for example, boasted of interviews with “three dozen” Obama officials, and was stuffed with “glorifying details only those very close to Obama could possibly know,” such as how he reads Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical writings on waging a “just war’’ when deciding which terrorists to vaporize. It can’t be coincidence that every revelation portrayed Obama as a “strong, bold, unflinching” president.

If the White House “isn’t willing or able to plug its holes,” said the New York Post in an editorial, then we need a real criminal investigation, instead of Holder’s face-saving sham. Detailed exposures of our national security operations endanger our soldiers and intelligence agents overseas. Obama should appoint a special prosecutor, so that leakers in his administration face the threat of jail time for their “slow-motion treason.”

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Our problem isn’t too many leaks, said Denver Nicks in TheDailyBeast.com, but too many secrets. We classify core aspects of our foreign policy, from the CIA’s drone program to our covert wars in Iran and Yemen, while giving the some 1 million people in our national security apparatus “more access to more secrets than ever before.” That has made leaks “not only inevitable but necessary.” They’re the only way Americans can find out what’s being done in their names.