The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Sessions vows crackdown on leaks
WASHINGTON » Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged on Friday to rein in government leaks that he said undermine American security, taking an aggressive public stand after being called weak on the matter by President Donald Trump.
The nation’s top law enforcement official cited no current investigations in which disclosures of information had jeopardized the country, but said the number of criminal leak probes had more than tripled in the early months of the Trump administration. Justice Department officials also said they were reviewing guidelines put in place to make it difficult for the government to subpoena journalists about their sources, and would not rule out the possibility that a reporter could be prosecuted.
“No one is entitled to surreptitiously fight to advance their battles in the media by revealing sensitive government information,” Sessions said in an announcement that followed a series of news reports this year on the Trump campaign and White House that have relied on classified information. “No government can be effective when its leaders cannot discuss sensitive matters in confidence or talk freely in confidence with foreign leaders.”
Media advocacy organizations condemned the announcement, with Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, saying the decision to review existing guidelines was “deeply troubling.”
Meanwhile, a White House adviser raised the possibility of lie detector tests for the small number of people in the West Wing and elsewhere with access to transcripts of Trump’s phone calls. The Washington Post on Thursday published transcripts of his conversations with the leaders of Mexico and Australia.
Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway told “Fox & Friends” that “it’s easier to figure out who’s leaking than the leakers may realize.” And might lie detectors be used? She said: “Well, they may, they may not.”
Trump’s outbursts against media organizations he derides as “fake news” have led to predictions that his administration will more aggressively try to root out leakers, and the timing of the Justice Department’s announcement — one week after the president complained on Twitter that Sessions had been weak on “intel leakers” — raised questions about whether the attorney general’s action was aimed at quelling the anger of the man who appointed him.
Sessions said in his remarks that his department has more than tripled the number of active leaks investigations compared with the number pending when President Barack Obama left office, and the number of referrals to the Justice Department for potential investigation of unauthorized disclosures had “exploded.” The Justice Department under Sessions is prosecuting a contractor in Georgia accused of leaking a classified government report to a media organization.
“This nation must end this culture of leaks. We will investigate and seek to bring criminals to justice. We will not allow rogue anonymous sources with security clearances to sell out our country,” Sessions said in his remarks.
Media organizations also had an often-tense relationship with the Obama administration, whose Justice Department brought more leaks cases than during all previous administrations combined and was criticized for maneuvers seen as needlessly aggressive and intrusive.
That included a secret subpoena of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors following a 2012 story about a foiled bomb plot, and the labeling of a Fox News journalist as a “co-conspirator” after a report on North Korea.