Tim Rutten Should Know Better

Tim Rutten in the LA Times discussing what he describes as "a nasty turn in criticism of press." He argues that the calls for reporters such as the WaPo's Dana Priest to tried under the Espionage Act is wrong:

One of the odder aspects of this campaign is that most of its participants also are lawyers experienced enough to know that, while the Espionage Act is suffused with murky thinking and ambiguous language, it seems fairly clear that it applies only in time of war. All political rhetoric — and the very real threat of terrorist Islamo-fascism — to the contrary, Congress has made no such declaration. Similarly, the act requires that a person "willfully" intended to injure the United States with his or her conduct. Put those two things together and you've got a pretty good answer to these conservative commentators' increasingly angry questions about why the Justice Department isn't already after Priest, Risen and Lichtblau.

While Congress in fact did not declare war, I believe that the "ambiguous language" present in the statute allows some leeway with regard to when we are at war and what "at war" means.

As for the act requiring that a person "willfully" intend to injure the US, I would argue that Mary McCarthy did indeed intend to harm the US. She knew full well that her leaking information that would be printed would blow open a covert program that was potentially of great use to the intelligence services of our nation. She willfully disclosed secret information that may have repercussions for years and may result in harm coming to the country.

It still remains to be seen if these prisons even existed as the EU found that they did not. Perhaps this was a sting to find out who was leaking information previously and it led back to McCarthy.

Either way, she leaked information on a covert action to a reporter and that reporter chose to run the story knowing that it was secret information and would cause harm to the US. It's plain to see.