White House Press Secretary Jay Carney faced a tough round of questions today when a reporter suggested that President Obama supports “aggressive journalism” in Syria and other countries, but opposes such investigation of his own administration.
“How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?” ABC’s Jake Tapper asked after Carney praised reporters killed on dangerous assignments in Syria. “I think you’ve invoked [the Espionage Act] for the sixth time, and before the Obama administration it had only been used three times in history,” he added.
Tapper also suggested that the White House “want[s] aggressive journalism, you just don’t want it in the United States.”
Carney refused to comment on the particular cases involving the Espionage Act, but defended the power to prosecute whistleblowers in the interest of national security. “There are issues here that involve highly-sensitive classified information and I think that divulging that kind of information is a serious issue and it always has been,” he said.
Tapper countered that Obama seems to think “the truth should come out abroad, it shouldn’t come out here.”
“That’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not,” Carney replied. “You’re making a judgment about a broad array of cases and I can’t judge those specifically.”
When Tapper noted that third party watchdog group had made the same judgment, Carney replied that “it’s not one that I’m going to make,” before moving to another questioner.
