I Leak, You Leak, We All Leak At The Senate Intelligence Committee

Senate Intelligence Chair Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, on the firing of CIA administrator Mary O. McCarthy over allegations that she leaked classified information about the network of "black site" gulags the CIA uses to torture terrorism suspects:

<!--StartFragment --> "[T]hose who leak classified information not only risk the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods, but also expose the brave men and women of the intelligence community to greater danger. Clearly, those guilty of improperly disclosing classified information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Pat Roberts (yes, that Pat Roberts), the evening of the invasion of Iraq, March 20, 2003, in a speech to the National Newspapers Association:

<!--StartFragment -->[I]ntelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad.

One former senior intelligence official, whose position required involvement in numerous leak investigations, on the implications of Roberts' leak, which "<!--StartFragment -->bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States" (thus ruining future attempts to locate Hussein):

<!--StartFragment --> On a scale of one to ten, if Mary McCarthy did what she is accused of doing, it would be at best a six or seven. What Pat Roberts did, from a legal and national security point of view, was an eleven.

All this and more in Murray Waas' (yes, that Murray Waas) latest piece for the National Journal on double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to Republicans and intelligence leaks.

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