Going after leaks

last updated 8 January 2015

Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration has launched an all-out assault against leaks of classified information, The Washington Post reported this week. The effort includes a warning, filed by the Justice Department in a recent case, that journalists who receive confidential defense information can be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act, a law originally aimed at wartime spies. In the past month, the FBI has interviewed dozens of government employees in an effort to trace the sources for articles about the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program and about secret CIA prisons. Agents have also interviewed journalists at The Sacramento Bee about stories based on sealed documents in a California terror case. “Reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.