Quick... act surprised:
Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive "war on leaks" since the Nixon administration, according to a report published on Thursday that says the administration's attempts to control the flow of information is hampering the ability of journalists to do their jobs.
The author of the study, the former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, says the
administration's actions have severely hindered the release of information that could be used to hold it to account.
Downie, an editor during the Post's investigations of Watergate, acknowledged that Obama had inherited a culture of secrecy that had built up since 9/11. But despite promising to be more open, Obama had become "more aggressive", stepping up the Espionage Act to pursue those accused of leaking classified information.
"The war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I've seen since the Nixon administration," Downie said in the report, which was commissioned by the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and email records," the report says.
This had a chilling effect on government accountability, even on matters that were less sensitive, it said.
David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and one of 30 journalists interviewed by Downie, says in the report: "This is the most closed, control-freak administration I've ever covered."
One would think, if they were prone to rational thought, that this news, paired with news that the Obama administration and the IRS exchanged confidential taxpayer information, coupled with the news that Obamacare will be enforced by the IRS and matched up with other recent events showing the thuggishness with which this administration governs, that more of us would be coming to the conclusions this WaPo investigation has led to.
But... the prerequisite for these conclusions is rational thought.
Which means we're in deep dookey.
Carry on.
