Leaks Are Sinking US Foreign Policy

BRITISH police investigating the Manchester terror attack say they have stopped sharing information with the US after a series of leaks that have so angered the British government that Prime Minister Theresa May wants to discuss them with President Trump during a NATO meeting in Brussels.

What can Trump tell her, though? The leaks drive him nuts, too.

Since the beginning of this century, the US intelligence services and their clients have acted as if they wanted the world to know they couldn’t guarantee the confidentiality of any information that falls into their hands. At this point, the culture of leaks is not just a menace to intelligencesharing allies. It’s a threat to the intelligence community’s credibility.

In 2003, President George W. Bush reportedly authorized an aide to leak highly classified intelligence on Iraq to The New York Times to support his decision to go to war. It was an early indication that leaks would be used for political purposes and that US political leaders would consider it par for the course.

Then, in 2010, WikiLeaks began releasing US intelligence data, including an Army Counterintelligence Center report on how to stop the release of secret documents on WikiLeaks. That didn’t stop Julian Assange’s Web site from releasing secret data provided by Chelsea Manning and, in 2013, by NSA contractor Edward Snowden — two of the biggest troves of secret material the public has ever seen.

In 2010, CIA agents in China began disappearing or dying one after another for several years. Five years later, Chinese hackers stole data about millions of US government employees.

In 2012, CIA chief David Petraeus resigned after it came out that he’d leaked classified information to his lover and biographer, Paula Broadwell.

In 2016, the US intelligence services accused the Russian government of hacking the presidential election campaign, in particular the Democratic Party’s. After Trump won the election, leaks intensified to a frenzy, with unnamed former and current intelligence officials talking daily to the press about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians.

Overheard telephone conversations with the Russian ambassador proved to be the downfall of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. At the same time, NSA hacking tools were published online by a hacking group (leading to a recent WannaCry ransomware attack, which used a Windows vulnerability found in that trove), and WikiLeaks revealed a less advanced but still effective CIA hacking arsenal.

The leak-o-rama has grown bizarre lately. Intelligence sources leaked the allegation that Trump leaked sensitive intelligence data related to Islamic State to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, without revealing what exactly Trump said. The next day, someone leaked the information leaked by Trump had come from Israel.

Trump has railed against the leaks privately (that has leaked out, of course) and on Twitter, but he has been unable to stop it. All he can do is join the ranks of leakers and do what Bush did, firing his own salvos in the anonymous war.

If this history has taught the US intel community anything, it’s that leaking classified information isn’t particularly dangerous and those who do it largely enjoy impunity.

If no one gets punished for leaking, why not give classified information to the media just for fun? The Manchester leaks — the name of the terrorist and gory pictures from the scene — seem to fall into that cat- egory. US intelligence officials had nothing to gain by leaking it. They were just bragging they knew stuff.

This, of course, is not how intelligence services normally operate. After the Cambridge spy ring rendered the UK’s MI5 and MI6 transparent to Soviet intelligence for a while, the two services engaged in a massive cover-up to avoid embarrassment.

But the US intelligence community doesn’t mind serving as the world’s biggest provider of sensational story ideas to the media. It doesn’t act embarrassed, though the leaks mean it’s been thoroughly thrashed by rivals such as China and Russia, and it hasn’t gone on lockdown to look for serial leakers in its ranks.

US allies won’t always be as open about withholding information as the British police have been. They’ll do it quietly, and they won’t leak those decisions to the press.

The media has lapped up the leaks; reporters and their readers are used to trusting and respecting intel agencies. But in the current unusual situation, reporters are the last line of defense. What if we’re spreading lies, and what if we’re putting people in danger by publishing what these anonymous sources tell us?