Security Leak Being Investigated
"Opinion"06/10/2012
Paul Munnis
Despite the sarcasm of Republican Rep. Peter King (R,NY), I believe President Obama when he says that he wants to know who has been committing Security leaks.
According to Rep. King the trail leads to the White House.
The Justice Department has appointed two prosecutors to go after the person or persons responsible for leaking classified information but Rep. King has questioned their willingness to go deep inside of the White House for answers.
However Eric Holder has said that they have full authority to go where they must to find the culprits.
This isn’t a big difficult investigation. In each case there is a list of authorized people with access to the info. They had to sign it out and back in with a date/time stamp issued. By intersecting the lists of names and the time periods of access then a number of likely suspects will be isolated. Then a deep probe into the communications and backup data files should surface the needed information.
After that it turns political.
My thinking is that Obama wants to know who he can’t trust with classified information so that he can plug the leak at its source.
Also, I am certain the CIA wants to know what else the perpetrators have been handing out and to who and when so they will be on the backs of investigators evaluating them.
Once Obama knows the source of the leak he will move to plug it and he will be sorely tempted to make a public hanging over the act in order to send a strong message to those that handle classified data that he means to enforce the law. Whether he does or not will depend upon what the investigators find and how appropriate his handling of the matter turns out to be.
Every person in the nation who is given access to classified data is briefed on their responsibility under the law and is given to sign an annual certification that they have been briefed on their responsibilities and then they sign a legal document attesting that they understand and agree to abide by the law. Once they are uncovered they won’t really have a leg to stand on.