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Originally Posted by stevo
Its not that the 'whistleblower' should be arrested for 'blowing the whistle' but there are proper channels to go through when dealing wth classified information. YOu don't run to the press with that kind of info. Doing that is irresponsible when it comes to national security.
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stevo,
I did some googling on the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act - I'll post sources later maybe, but I'm in something of a rush. From what I can see, it looks like the federal intelligence employee would report the issue to the Office of the Inspector General or a similar entity. If the OIG found the issue credible, they would report the issue to the Intelligence Committees. I know that both of these comittees are currently chaired by the Republican party, and I believe I heard that the heads of these committees are the very same people who the Executive consulted with concerning the program in the first place.
From what I have read, the paper that broke the story sat on it a year. My guess is that it may have been reported internally through the OIG / intelligence committees, or it was obvious that the information had made its way as far as it was going to. Even if it wasn't reported through the OIG, the people to whom it would have been reported were already in possession of the knowledge. If the NSA employees / journalists / whomever else felt they had participated in / uncovered illegal activities - what recourse would they have if the information was stalled in committee?
Let's assume that we're not talking about wiretapping, but we're talking about putting balloons full of hydrochloric acid into the rectums of irish children of ages 10-12, abducted from portions of the Appalachian Mountains, as part of some secret government program to test the resistance of Celtic sphincter tissue to chemically aggressive environments. Its headed under the NSA/FBI. I think it's absolutely clear that such a program would be unethical and illegal, where you may not feel the wiretapping issue is as clear cut. If this information has been reported to the Intelligence Committees via the established channels, and they are sitting on it...do the people with knowledge of the program have an ethical responsibility to bring light to the issue? Is the government protected from responsbility for illegal actions, as long as they are deemed classified in nature?
If you say the government is protected, I don't understand how that is consistent with a conservative position of limited government with limited federal powers. If you say it is not, then the issue involving the wiretapping story centers not around how the information was broken, but around whether or not the program is illegal. At least, it seems that way to me.