Amid concerns about the behavior of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and President Trump’s continued coziness with Russia, is another troubling question: Who leaked to the press Flynn’s conversations with a Russian ambassador?
Bloomberg’s Eli Lake explains, “Normally intercepts of U.S. officials and citizens are some of the most tightly held government secrets.”
He continues, “This is for good reason. Selectively disclosing details of private conversations monitored by the FBI or NSA gives the permanent state the power to destroy reputations from the cloak of anonymity. This is what police states do.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer echoed those concerns during his daily briefing Tuesday afternoon, remarking, “We have to wonder that people who work for our government, who are entrusted with classified information, decisional-based materials are leaking that information out. That, I do believe is a big story.”
In an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation conducted hours before his resignation, Flynn himself argued, “You call them leaks. It’s a criminal act. This is a crime. It’s not just a wink and a nod.”
“One has to wonder: are they coming out of people in the National Security Council? Are they coming out of people in the intel community? Or State? Or Defense?” Flynn told the Daily Caller.
There is a reasonable case to be made that intelligence officials, whose job is to monitor people in other countries and who are prohibited from spying on Americans, are actively leaking sensitive information with the intentions of undermining the Trump administration. Indeed it is possible that anti-Trump forces in the government are guilty of exploiting their own power to undermine the White House.
That seems like an issue worthy of concern from all Americans interested in the potential abuse of government power, regardless of their party membership.
“In normal times,” Lake wrote, “the idea that U.S. officials entrusted with our most sensitive secrets would selectively disclose them to undermine the White House would alarm those worried about creeping authoritarianism.”
Perhaps these developments are simply another indication that the times in which we live are anything but normal.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
