Who needs a security program, anyway? – UPDATED

Not when there is a president the press wants to take down.

Let’s start with the one thing we know for sure about the Bush administration’s program to listen to al Qaeda’s phone calls into and out of the United States: It’s dead.

After all the publicity of the past two weeks, does anyone think that the boys working on plans for Boston Harbor, the Golden Gate Bridge or Chicago’s Loop are still chatting by phone? If the purpose of the public exposure was to pull the plug on the pre-emptive surveillance program, mission accomplished. Be safe, Times Square.

Thank you, New York Times.

Can we get a serious investigation going on the leaking of this program, please? Faster?

UPDATES: Mac’s Mind’s source is apparently saying that Sen. Rockefeller has something to be nervous about. Not really surprising, is it? Hope he can nail that down.

Dr. Sanity has more on that and additional links.

Porter Goss has an op-ed at the Times.

Judge Laurence Silberman, a chairman of President Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction, said he was “stunned” by the damage done to our critical intelligence assets by leaked information. The commission reported last March that in monetary terms, unauthorized disclosures have cost America hundreds of millions of dollars; in security terms, of course, the cost has been much higher. Part of the problem is that the term “whistleblower” has been misappropriated. The sharp distinction between a whistleblower and someone who breaks the law by willfully compromising classified information has been muddied.

As a member of Congress in 1998, I sponsored the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act to ensure that current or former employees could petition Congress, after raising concerns within their respective agency, consistent with the need to protect classified information.

Exercising one’s rights under this act is an appropriate and responsible way to bring questionable practices to the attention of those in Congress charged with oversight of intelligence agencies. And it works. Government employees have used statutory procedures — including internal channels at their agencies — on countless occasions to correct abuses without risk of retribution and while protecting information critical to our national defense.

On the other hand, those who choose to bypass the law and go straight to the press are not noble, honorable or patriotic. Nor are they whistleblowers. Instead they are committing a criminal act that potentially places American lives at risk. It is unconscionable to compromise national security information and then seek protection as a whistleblower to forestall punishment.