Obama's war on leaks is bad for democracy

Several years ago I got a lesson on government leaks.

I was in Washington lobbying on behalf of the Society of Professional Journalists against a bill that would have made it illegal to leak information to the press. The society worried such a bill would cut off a flow of information that, at times, can be the public's only means of knowing important things that go on behind the closed doors of power.

Together with a few colleagues, I was ushered past several secure checkpoints and into a windowless meeting room deep within the Capitol to meet with staff members from the House Intelligence Committee.

Naively, I asked whether any truly sensitive matters of national security ever were leaked. What followed were sarcastic chuckles around the table. I was ensured emphatically that it happens all the time; that sometimes meetings on top-secret matters have barely finished before the media has classified information.

That's one side of government leaks.

As a reporter, I would often see the other side. One example: Many years ago a state bureaucrat (in a different state than Utah) learned I was investigating a shady business that was luring customers into purchasing membership in a discount buying club. Frustrated by official rules prohibiting her from talking publicly about ongoing investigations, or even acknowledging they existed, she quietly obtained her file on the business, laid it on her desk, announced she needed to leave the office for awhile and left me alone.

The message was clear. She hadn't officially given me anything, but I was free to look at the file. I did so. Within hours after my story was published, the company had cleaned out its offices and padlocked its doors.

All of this came back to me last week as I read a report on the current administration's war against leaks, written by Adam Liptak of the New York Times. Only a few years ago, he wrote, the Bush administration's Justice Department spokesman said the federal government wouldn't pursue every leak. "On balance, it is more important that the media have the ability to report," a department spokesman had said. "It's important to our democracy."

And yet today, Liptak reports, the Obama administration "has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined."

That's a startling statement. Even more startling is how Washington now aggressively uses high-tech information — records of cell phone calls, texts, surveillance cameras — rather than trying to subpoena reporters.