By allowing the leaks, the regime is basically giving its blessing. They probably think of Sanger as a national hero, while they'd like to string up Asange for doing the same thing. Hippocracy much?When the New York Times published a detailed story by chief Washington correspondent David Sanger today confirming the U.S. as the co-author of the Stuxnet virus and outlining Barack Obama's role in directing a highly classified digital monkeywrenching program against Iranian nuclear facilities, many observers noted that the story couldn't have been written without White House support. Which is odd, considering how much energy the White House has been putting into prosecuting leaks it doesn't like.
Sanger's story contains a wealth of presumably Top Secret data about the Stuxnet program—dubbed "Olympic Games" by the CIA—including a direct quote from Vice President Joe Biden during a Situation Room meeting about the operation. Not to diminish Sanger's reporting—one man's hard-won scoop is another man's "official leak"—but it's impossible to imagine that Sanger could have gathered the level of detail that he did about the classified program if the White House didn't want at least some of the information to reach the public.
Considering the fact that Obama's Justice Department has relentlessly pursued even the most innocuous leakers of classified information that it didn't want reaching the public, from NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake to former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who allegedly leaked details of a failed CIA operation against Iran to Times reporter James Risen, the story reeked of White House hypocrisy.
In other words, at least as far as today's story is concerned, "senior government officials" were aware that the Times was on the verge of releasing highly classified details about a CIA operation. One that happened to have been effective, and the execution of which reflected well on Obama. And neither the White House nor the CIA did anything to try and stop it. Imagine that.
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