Something Is Deeply Wrong in the U.S. Intelligence Community

Many high-profile Trump critics, irresponsibly in our view, have been giddily cheering the onslaught of leaks designed to damage the Trump administration.

Reasonable people can debate the merits of leaking in certain circumstances. But the recent unauthorized release by U.S. intelligence services of sensitive information relating to the Manchester bombings has no imaginable justification. As Leonid Bershidsky writes in Bloomberg, it can only be understood as the product of a dangerously arrogant and unaccountable intelligence community:

If … history has taught the U.S. intelligence community anything, it’s that leaking classified information isn’t particularly dangerous and those who do it largely enjoy impunity. Manning spent seven years in prison (though she’d been sentenced to 35), but Snowden, Assange, Petraeus, the unknown Chinese mole, the people who stole the hacking tools and the army of recent anonymous leakers, many of whom probably still work for U.S. intelligence agencies, have escaped any kind of meaningful punishment.

If no one gets punished for leaking, why not give classified information to the media just for fun? The Manchester leaks — the name of the terrorist, which the U.K. authorities hadn’t been able to release, and gory pictures from the scene of the attack — seem to fall into that category. The U.S. intelligence officials who provided that information to reporters had nothing to gain by doing it. They were just bragging they knew stuff.

Trump shares blame for some of the leaks that have pummeled him in the press. The chaos in the White House is the President’s own responsibility; these are his own appointees and confidants singing like canaries to a media eager for dirt.

But the Manchaster situation once again shows that he is not entirely wrong to lash out against a deep state that is out of control, and in this case merely broadcasting information that can only help our enemies—just for the heck of it. Heads should roll, and soon.