NYTimes | Soon after President Obama appointed him director of national intelligence in 2009, Dennis C. Blair
called for a tally of the number of government officials or employees
who had been prosecuted for leaking national security secrets. He was
dismayed by what he found.
In the previous four years, the record showed, 153 cases had been referred to the Justice Department. Not one had led to an indictment.
That scorecard “was pretty shocking to all of us,” Mr. Blair said. So in
a series of phone calls and meetings, he and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
fashioned a more aggressive strategy to punish anyone who leaked
national security information that endangered intelligence-gathering
methods and sources.
“My background is in the Navy, and it is good to hang an admiral once in
a while as an example to the others,” said Mr. Blair, who left the
administration in 2010. “We were hoping to get somebody and make people
realize that there are consequences to this and it needed to stop.”
The Obama administration has done its best to define those consequences,
with an aggressive focus on leaks and leakers that has led to more than
twice as many prosecutions as there were in all previous
administrations combined. It also led to a significant legal victory
on Friday when a federal appeals court accepted the Justice
Department’s argument that the First Amendment does not protect
reporters from having to reveal the sources suspected of leaking
information to them.
In tracing the origins of this effort, present and former government
officials said the focus on leaks began at the administration’s highest
levels and was driven by pressure from the intelligence agencies and
members of Congress.
