{"id":25754,"date":"2017-09-17T09:03:22","date_gmt":"2017-09-17T14:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25754"},"modified":"2017-09-17T09:03:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T14:03:22","slug":"former-cia-director-compared-prosecuting-leakers-under-the-espionage-act-to-driving-tacks-with-a-sledge-hammer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25754","title":{"rendered":"Former CIA Director compared prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act to \u201cdriving tacks with a sledge hammer\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former CIA Director compared prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act to \u201cdriving tacks with a sledge hammer\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Declassified report called journalists \u201cpatriotic,\u201d argued for more appropriate responses to leaks.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Just months before the government\u2019s first successful use of the Espionage Act against someone for leaking to the media, a declassified report written by then-CIA Director William Casey argued that just such an act would be irresponsible.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

In the formerly SECRET paper<\/a>, the Director stated that using the Espionage Act against media leakers was like \u201cdriving tacks with a sledge hammer\u201d – grossly excessive. Months later, the government did just that, setting a precedent which is still used today. Two years later, Reagan\u2019s war against leakers had pushed Casey into the even more aggressive position of threatening not just leakers with prosecution – but the Washington Post<\/em>, the Washington Times<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em>, Time<\/em> and Newsweek<\/em> as well<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Far from minimizing the potential harm of national security leaks, Casey emphasized the damage that they could do. However, none of the five examples provided by Casey in his report resulted in any actual harm. Two examples \u201ccould have\u201d resulted in adversary adjusting their techniques, though the language implies that hadn\u2019t happened. A third and fourth example resulted in potential damage which forced the Agency to cut off contact with a human source lest that danger be amplified. While endangering human sources is never a good thing and disrupting HUMINT operations was unlikely to have been the intention, the report again indicates that no actual harm came to anyone. A fifth example placed someone in danger of being discovered, again a possibility which hadn\u2019t come to pass, though it \u201ccould possibly have an adverse effect on U.S. relations\u201d with an unknown group.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former CIA Director compared prosecuting leakers under the Espionage Act to \u201cdriving tacks with a sledge hammer\u201d Declassified report called journalists \u201cpatriotic,\u201d argued for more appropriate responses to leaks. Just months before the government\u2019s first successful use of the Espionage Act against someone for leaking to the media, a declassified report written by then-CIA Director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[135,16034,6677,9840,512,16035,16036],"class_list":["post-25754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-cia","tag-emma-best","tag-espionage-act","tag-leaks","tag-media","tag-muckrock","tag-william-casey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25755,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25754\/revisions\/25755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}