Leaky Government, the Safest Kind There Is
I’m not sure what all the fuss and bother is about this or that administration leak. When I look back on this presidency, or almost any that preceded it, I’m stunned by just how close we may have come to total disaster were it not for the leakers. James Reston famously said that “a government is the only vessel that leaks from the top” and thank goodness for that.
At the very end of the Clinton administration, in fact the last few days, Congress passed a bill that would make it a crime to leak any classified government information, including stuff from whistle-blowers and even ambassadors. To his everlasting credit, Clinton vetoed the bill, saying that it would
“unnecessarily chill legitimate activities that are at the heart of a democracy.” There seems always to be a patriot at hand when we really need one. Ten weeks later, George W. Bush sat himself in the presidential chair, so that’s how close we came to chilling legitimate activities.
It was an accident on the part of Congress, a …