The NSA Leak and the 2004 Election

Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial looks at the “unseemly symbiosis between elements of the press corps and a cabal of partisan bureaucrats at the CIA and elsewhere in the ‘intelligence community’ who have been trying to undermine the Bush Presidency.” The editors also note that there were “many selective election-year leaks of prewar Iraq intelligence fed to the likes of the [New York] Times’s James Risen, who also won a Pulitzer this year–for helping expose the National Security Agency’s anti-al Qaeda surveillance program.” But even the NSA disclosure may have been intended as a pre-election leak. The New York Times revealed the program in December but noted it had delayed the article’s publication for a year. According to the December 16, 2005 Times piece,

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

So the original piece was set to run in December 2004. Assuming it took some time to put together, the original leak tipping off the Times may have occurred some time before the November election. The Times also noted,

Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

And what are the odds the leaker voted for Bush on November 2, 2004?

The NSA Leak and the 2004 Election

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