One man’s leak is another man’s freedom of information.
Chris Stewart, Republican congressman from Utah, has rolled out a bill that would make it easier for prosecutors to charge, convict and imprison, for up to three years, anyone found to have divulged classified U.S. government information.
It’s not a necessary bill and not a good idea. It is unlikely to go very far. But it is not hard to guess why Stewart is promoting it.
For the six months that President Trump has been in office, leaks from and about the administration have been just about all anyone is talking about. They have, so far, led to the quick ouster of Trump’s first national security advisor and have been the root of everything from the investigation of independent counsel Robert Mueller to the major theme of most late night television shows.
Someone has even counted up the number of leaks involving the Trump administration in the first four months of its existence and determined that there were at least 62 of them. For each of the last two presidents at that point in their tenure, the number was less than 10.
It is also not hard to imagine what Stewart would be arguing if the shoe were on the other foot. If, that is, that many or more leaks were flowing from a Hillary Clinton administration. In such a circumstance, he and his fellow Republicans would be quick to embrace the brave and selfless whistle-blowers whose actions were protecting the American public from what would otherwise be an insular and crooked regime.
Which might very well have been an accurate description.
But for all the high dudgeon that Stewart, Trump and others have managed to exhibit over the past several months, the fact is that it is hard to name a leak in this flood that has truly harmed national security in any way.
Sure, they’ve made the president look bad, caused him to fire aides and lash out at the media. And boosted Stephen Colbert’s ratings. But the common thread through most of those leaked bits of information has been things the American people and Congress really ought to know about embarrassing, improper and perhaps — though that’s yet to be determined — illegal stuff the administration is getting up to.
This move to focus on the alleged impropriety of the leaks, rather than what that information tells us about the conduct of our government, is clearly Nixonian. That administration’s frustration with plugging those leaks led to the creation of an off-the-books operation called the Plumbers. Which carried out the Watergate break-in. Which, well, you know.
In a free society, information must flow as freely as possible. Because we need it to be good citizens. Legal consequences should be reserved for those who pass truly sensitive information, the kind that puts lives at risk, to our enemies.