Somebody Should Go To Jail Over This ABC News Story

The press is, once again, deliberately trying to help America’s enemies and undermine the war on terror. This time, it’s Brian Ross and Richard Esposito over at ABC News,

“The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

…The sources say the CIA developed the covert plan over the last year and received approval from White House officials and other officials in the intelligence community.

Officials say the covert plan is designed to pressure Iran to stop its nuclear enrichment program and end aid to insurgents in Iraq.”

…Under the law, the CIA needs an official presidential finding to carry out such covert actions. The CIA is permitted to mount covert “collection” operations without a presidential finding.

“Presidential findings” are kept secret but reported to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other key congressional leaders.

The “nonlethal” aspect of the presidential finding means CIA officers may not use deadly force in carrying out the secret operations against Iran.

This is top secret data and there is no way that Ross and Esposito could receive it without the law being broken.

What needs to happen at this point is that an investigation needs to be started to find out who their sources were. Then, if they don’t hand them over, Ross and Esposito should be thrown in a jail cell until they do. That can be a day, a week, a month, or the rest of their lives. It doesn’t make any difference. Either they cough up the names or they stay in prison until they do.

Then, once they do inevitably give up their sources, the government should throw everything in the book at the people who leaked this data. The goal should be to put them in jail, breaking big rocks into smaller rocks, until they’re too old to remember why they were put in jail in the first place.

The alternative to that is to essentially allow our own press to act as an intelligence gathering service for our enemies. Think about it — if an agent of our government had passed this information on to the Iranians, he would have been treated as a traitor and would spend his life in jail. But, if he gives the exact same info to the press and the press broadcasts it to the world, then suddenly it’s supposed to be ok? Wrong answer. This is a malicious leak designed to aid America’s enemies and compromise our national security. It’s scandalous that someone leaked it and it’s even more scandalous that ABC betrayed its own country by publishing it.

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