Within the past several weeks we have had two prime examples of how our democracy is being protected by the press. We hear the Conservatives and Bush/Cheney complain about leaks and how they are harming our country.
There are some properly classified stories that have been leaked by the press that have harmed our security such as the way we have monitored Ben Laden from him using his Cell Phone.
The two instances recently are the NYT/AP story about the NIE report saying the Iraq war has made us less safe by stimulating hate for America and increasing the number of terrorists throughout the world. Bush and Cheney complained about leaking classified information but when you look at the unclassified version of the NIE Bush released anyone can see that DID NOT threaten our security nor provide information about the ways we gather intelligence. What the unclassified NIE that Bush released does show is that what Bush and company have been telling us is just the opposite of what our Intelligence agencies have concluded.
The second issue was the ABC release of the Rep. Foley Story. As it turns out the Speaker of the House, the GOP Majority Leader and Rep Alexander were all made aware that there may be a problem. In addition, only the GOP members of The Page Program Oversight Committee were made aware of the Foley E-Mails and the Democrat on that committee, Dale Kildee of Michigan was NOT informed of the E-Mails.
Thus we had the most senior GOP leadership in the house FAIL to follow up and learn the true nature of the problem until ABC went public and the GOP kept this information from the Democrats.
If it had not been for the Press, Not Fox News, we would most likely still not know about Rep Foley and he could have sailed to another election victory in the hevely Republican area he represented. We would still not know that our intelligence community is totally at odds with our President about the consequences of the Iraq War.
This administration uses secrecy to keep any information that does not support their policies or that would make the GOP look like they were not acting in the best interest of our country classified. The NIE report was released six months earlier and the Foly E-Mail issue was almost a year ago. These two stories would still be safely kept under raps by Bush and the GOP leadership had it not been for the Free Press in America. I for one can not wait to read the new book by Bob Woodward. I bet Bush and Cheney are fuming about this potential bomb shell.