Keeping the nation's secrets

When I was sworn in as a U.S. foreign service officer in 1967, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and to keep the nation's secrets. And that's exactly what I did for the next 30 years.

So I now have difficulty understanding how some high-level career bureaucrats in our foreign affairs agencies - the CIA and the State and Defense departments - can take it upon themselves to declassify secret documents and deliver them to journalists because they don't agree with Bush administration policy on a given issue. Although apologists for these official leakers describe them as patriotic whistleblowers, I think they're traitors because they've violated their oath of office. And last time I checked, that was a crime.

I've read and heard all kinds of specious arguments as to why these leakers are Great Americans because they're doing something for the "greater good" of the country; however, I disagree and think those questions should be resolved in federal court. In other words, leakers should be charged with crimes and forced to defend themselves in court. That's the only fair way to determine whether they're patriots or traitors.

In considering this question, I recall a military-media seminar I attended at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., many years ago in which noted muckraker Seymour "Sy" Hersh, then of the New York Times, warned military officers that it was their job to keep the secrets and his to reveal them. "Once you hand secret documents to me," he warned, "I'm going to publish them," which is exactly what he's done over the course of a long and controversial career in journalism.

So let's get this straight: Military officers and other federal officials are charged with keeping the nation's secrets away from the news media, if they can - the old cat-and-mouse game, if you will. For those readers who are old enough, think Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.

Many times during my diplomatic career I came across official documents that could have been turned into sensational news stories. But I didn't turn them over to my friends in the news business because I knew I faced possible criminal charges if I did. For me, that was a powerful deterrent. But apparently some of today's high-level federal bureaucrats have designated themselves to be above the law in order to promote their own personal political agendas.

Let's take the case of fired CIA official Mary McCarthy as an example. She's the person who's suspected of divulging highly classified details of alleged secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest. Her illegal (in my opinion) action won a Pulitzer Prize for Ms. Priest. So shame on Ms. McCarthy, who probably broke the law, and conditional kudos to Ms. Priest, who didn't.

And now, Ms. McCarthy must pay the price for her transgressions although a close friend who was her former boss at the CIA told Newsweek magazine that McCarthy "categorically denies being the source of the leak." Well, maybe, but the truth will come out during her federal court trial.

Other high-level leakers face similar trials. Most prominent among them is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who apparently told investigators that Cheney knew of his plan to "out" CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame, the wife of a retired American ambassador who went to Africa to check out reports that Niger had offered to sell "yellowcake" uranium (used to make atomic weapons) to Iraq. Veteran Washington columnist Bob Novak had reported that Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent to Niger at the recommendation of his wife, whom Novak identified by name as a secret agent.

All hell broke loose in Washington as everyone involved scrambled to find someone to blame for the leak. Libby has hinted that Cheney and/or White House political chief Karl Rove approved his decision to "out" Ms. Plame. But Rove's lawyer told Newsweek that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and "didn't tell any reporter that Ms. Plame worked for the CIA." Again, we'll learn the truth during Libby's forthcoming federal court trial, when he will undoubtedly subpoena Cheney and Rove to testify.

Of course the news media loves high-level leaks. "If CIA officials leaked information about the agency's secret prisons to ... Dana Priest, then the American public owes them a debt of gratitude," the Post asserted in a recent editorial before contradicting itself as follows: "We don't question the need for intelligence agencies to gather and keep secrets, or to penalize employees who fail to do so. Leaks that compromise national security ... must be aggressively prosecuted." That's true, which is why Ms. McCarthy should be prosecuted.

The problem of high-level leaks is one of the issues that incoming CIA Director Michael Hayden, former head of the super-secret National Security Agency, will have to address. CIA morale deteriorated markedly under outgoing Director Porter Goss, and Gen. Hayden will have his work cut out for him. For starters, he should make it clear that spies who leak secret documents to the news media to further their personal political agendas will be fired and prosecuted. I wish him well.

• Guy W. Farmer, a semi-retired journalist and former U.S. diplomat, resides in Carson City.