🚀 go-pugleaf

By Marc A. Thiessen, Published: February 4

Imagine if The Post broke a story about the biggest scandal of 
the Obama-era � and Washington responded with a collective yawn?

That�s precisely what happened recently when The Post reported 
on its front page that senior Obama administration officials 
were being investigated by the FBI and Justice Department for 
the leak last summer that the president had personally ordered 
cyberattacks on the Iranian nuclear program using a computer 
virus developed with Israel called Stuxnet.

The Post quotes a source who says that FBI agents and 
prosecutors are pursuing �everybody � at pretty high levels.� 
The paper further reports that investigators �have conducted 
extensive analysis of the e-mail accounts and phone records of 
current and former government officials� and that some have been 
confronted �with evidence of contact with journalists.�

This is big. And former senior government lawyers I spoke with 
recently explained why it could get a whole lot bigger:

The leaks clearly came from someone in the president�s inner 
circle. As The Post explains, �Knowledge of the virus was likely 
to have been highly compartmentalized and limited to a small set 
of Americans and Israelis.� Moreover, whoever leaked the 
information was present when the president discussed this covert 
action program in the Situation Room. There is a tiny universe 
of individuals who could have shared the details of President 
Obama�s personal deliberations on the covert program with the 
press.

This means there are essentially two possibilities for how the 
information got out.

Possibility No. 1: A senior administration or White House 
official disclosed the information to the press without the 
president�s personal approval.

That would be a potential crime and certainly a violation of the 
official�s oath of office � and in the case of a White House 
official, a violation of their contractual commitment to the 
Executive Office of the President. As one former senior Justice 
Department official told me, �It would be grounds for firing and 
likely prosecution, and it would definitely call into question 
the competency and security of the president�s supervision of 
his White House staff.�

Possibility No. 2: The president personally authorized a senior 
official to disclose classified and sensitive national security 
information regarding ongoing intelligence or counterterrorism 
operations.

This is potentially an even bigger scandal. Since the president 
has ultimate declassification authority, this would mean no 
crime was likely committed. But it is hard to imagine a credible 
argument that such a disclosure was made to advance the national 
security interests of the United States.

Quite the opposite, the Stuxnet leak was incredibly damaging. It 
exposed intelligence sources and methods, including the top 
secret codename for the program (�Olympic Games�). And it 
exposed the involvement of a U.S. ally, Israel. At one point in 
the New York Times story, a source says the Israelis were 
responsible for an error in the code who allowed it to replicate 
itself all around the world. The Times directly quotes one of 
the president�s briefers telling him �We think there was a 
modification done by the Israelis,� adding that �Mr. Obama, 
according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, 
fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The 
answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. �It�s got to 
be the Israelis,� he said. �They went too far�� (emphasis added).

So a person who was �in the room� when the president and vice 
president were briefed publicly confirmed Israeli involvement in 
a covert action against Iran. The damage this did � both to the 
operation and the trust between our two countries � is 
incalculable.

There are no credible national security grounds for such a 
disclosure. The only person whose interests could possibly be 
served by such a disclosure was Obama. The leak appeared six 
months before the president stood for reelection and was clearly 
intended to make Obama appear strong on foreign policy and 
counterterrorism. (One anonymous senior official is quoted by 
the Times as saying �From his first days in office, he was deep 
into every step in slowing the Iranian program � the diplomacy, 
the sanctions, every major decision.�)

If the president authorized the disclosure of national security 
secrets that exposed a covert action and undermined a U.S. ally 
in an effort to gain a political advantage in his reelection 
campaign, that would be a scandal of gigantic proportions. As 
one former top Justice Department official told me �if done for 
political gain, rather than for a bona fide purpose advancing 
the public interests of the United States, it could be grounds 
for impeachment.�

In other words, at best ObamaLeaks may be a crime; at worst, 
they could be an impeachable offense. So the question is: What 
are those senior Obama administration officials telling 
investigators when confronted �with evidence of contact with 
journalists�? Were the leaks unauthorized? Or are they defending 
their disclosures by invoking the President�s personal authority 
to declassify national security information without formal 
process?

If the former, then we could see senior Obama administration 
officials put on trial. If the latter, then it is the president 
who should be on trial � in the chamber of the United States 
Senate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/marc-thiessen-are-
obamaleaks-an-impeachable-offense/2013/02/04/14a89aca-6ee5-11e2-
ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html?tid=wp_ipad

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed 
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the 
outlaw Obama administration?

No.  Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in 
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a 
controlled rate of aimed fire.  ��

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