The State Department on Wednesday argued that press reports about internal government deliberations about national security issues can endanger people’s lives and complained that the press doesn’t appreciate how dangerous these leaks are.
“Sometimes, reporters fail to understand just how sensitive and serious these things can be,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
Nauert was pressed by AP reporter Matt Lee, who said the government is always warning that people are put in danger by leaks, but said there’s no evidence this is true. But Nauert insisted that the leaks can endanger people and can complicate internal talks, though she refused to go into more details.
“It limits our ability to have internal conversations. You don’t work here. I do,” she told Lee. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it firsthand.”
“I’m not going to get into details about that because that could further endanger people’s lives,” she added. “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Nauert’s comments came after a question about a Politico story that detailed internal documents indicating that the Trump administration is improperly giving U.S. visas to the children of Myanmar military leaders, despite a law that generally prohibits these visas unless there is a national security rationale for granting them.
While Nauert’s comments turned into a commentary about the press, she never explicitly asked reporters not to write stories based on internal government documents and began by criticizing the U.S. officials who leaked them.
“Someone at the State Department or one of the agencies leaked those documents to a reporter,” she said. “It’s a real disappointment … when colleagues, professionals leak deliberative documents.”
“It harms our ability to make decisions, to have free conversations among our colleagues about certain issues in the news, certain things that we need to make very important decisions about,” she said.
“When documents like that leak, it can also lead to people being injured in the field,” Nauert said. “I don’t just mean Americans, but I mean people on the ground.”
When Lee said taxpayers have a right to know what their government is doing, she said the deliberative process is usually protected, even though the final result of those deliberations is “absolutely” made public.
