Circumstantial Deniability

"We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press."
Michael Clemente, Fox News executive vice-president for news

"The president believes it's important that we find a proper balance between a need -- absolute need -- to protect our secrets and to prevent leaks that can jeopardize the lives of Americans and can jeopardize our national security interests on the one hand, and the need to defend the First Amendment and protect the ability of reporters to pursue investigative journalism."
Jay Carney, White House spokesman

Well, that's a difficult balance to achieve; the inalienable right as an American to practise free speech and all that goes along with it, as opposed to a left-leaning government that has assumed the right-mantle of controlling the news media. Those stated aims articulated by Mr. Carney appear mutually exclusive. It has been written that the Obama administration has undertaken to bring charges against more civil servants for leaking information than any other previous U.S. administration.

Not that there is any foreseeable danger that the United States is poised to join the news-stifling antics of the murder-prone Kremlin, or any other repressive regime, like Venezuela or Pakistan, for example. Just that it's rather unlike a free democracy, one that accords free speech top billing in its constitution, to investigate and harass news media and those who feed them forbidden-to-disclose government data that can "jeopardize our national security interests...".

Stephen Kim, a State Department advisor came under suspicion in the administration's investigation of classified information leakages resulting in embarrassment to the government of the United States. Mr. Kim was viewed as having committed a public security crime in improperly disclosing classified information to reporters. Law enforcement officials on the q.t. obtained search warrants for emails implicating James Rosen, chief Washington correspondent for Fox News.

Mr. Rosen's entries and exits to and from the State Department became a matter of intense interest in the investigation. No charges have been filed against the investigative newsman, although Mr. Kim has been accused of revealing classified state secrets to Fox News, and is currently awaiting trial. The journalist is viewed by investigators as an accessory to the crime of which Mr. Kim has been charged. Mr. Rosen is considered to be a co-conspirator; the thought is he violated criminal law.

Prosecutors have secretly subpoenaed Associated Press telephone records, relating to Mr. Rosen having reported in June of 2009 that U.S. intelligence officials warned President Obama along with senior administrative executives that North Korea would in all likelihood respond to a United Nations' Security Council resolution condemning its nuclear tests by repeating the offence. Which in fact is precisely what occurred when North Korea set off its third, more effective, nuclear test.

The Justice Department holds that improper, unauthorized disclosure of classified information to the press constitutes a serious risk of potential harm to national security. A serious enough charge. But is there a journalist of any manner of self-respecting repute who would shunt aside with disinterest one of those serendipitous brown paper envelopes slipped to his notice, and which disgorges revelations that would most certainly be of interest to the critical, involved reading public?

According to the affidavit for the search warrant, the morning Mr. Rosen's story was published was the very day that an intelligence report was communicated to intelligence officials, whose number included Mr. Kim. If damning evidence was sought, it was certainly discovered: Between the time of the communication and the time the story saw publication 'someone' with Mr. Kim's unique electronic profile and password happened to have accessed the report in question multiple times.

More: State Department security badge access records indicated that Messrs. Kim and Rosen (Mr. Rosen in his professional journalism capacity occupied an office at the State Department), left the building almost simultaneously, then returned a half-hour later, around the same time. The FBI appear to have caught their suspects. And the administration appears prepared to prosecute them. Them? That'll go over really big with the American news establishment.

Britain's response to the British government's attempt to leash their own news-gathering-and-promulgating industry was a chastening affair for the government. A response in kind to the U.S. administration's determination to rein in the enthusiasm for disclosure of the American press would be volcanic, erupting in a volatile fiery display of empowering indignation leading to charges that President Obama would be anxious to avoid.