RENO, Nev. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of trying to gain a political edge in their race by leaking classified information about the U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Romney leveled the accusation Tuesday during an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, his strongest jab yet at Obama on national security issues.
“This conduct is contemptible. It betrays our national interest. It compromises our men and women in the field,” Romney told the assembly of more than 1,000 veterans and advocates. “And it demands a full and prompt investigation by a special counsel, with explanation and consequence.”
Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed two federal prosecutors to get to the bottom of the leaks, but Romney suggested that wasn’t good enough. The White House has rejected calls for a special prosecutor, saying there is no need for one.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama has zero tolerance for leaks.
“The president has made abundantly clear that he has no tolerance for leaks, and he thinks leaks are damaging to our national security interests,” Carney told reporters traveling with the president at the same time Romney was speaking in Nevada.
Obama, himself, has rejected the notion that his White House was behind the leaks. He called such allegations “offensive” and “wrong” when questioned about them at a White House news conference in June.
“People, I think, need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me here approach this office,” Obama said.
His campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said Romney was resorting to “cheap attacks” on the president “that lack credibility rather than answering the most basic questions about his foreign-policy agenda.”
The Democratic leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, said Monday that the White House appears to be responsible for some leaks of classified information.
But the California senator also said she is certain Obama, who receives a daily intelligence briefing, was not disclosing secret information.
Romney referred to Feinstein’s comment in his address. She countered with a statement expressing regret that her remarks “are being used to impugn President Obama or his commitment to protecting national security secrets.”
Feinstein said she shouldn’t have speculated that the White House appeared to be responsible for the leaks because she doesn’t know the source of those disclosures.
Romney’s speech was a stinging retort to Obama’s address to the group Monday.
He criticized Obama’s handling of the Iranian nuclear threat, accused him of backing arbitrary cuts to defense spending that were also backed by Republicans in Congress, and charged him with alienating Israel, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East.
“The people of Israel deserve better than what they have received from the leader of the free world,” Romney said.
Vice President Joe Biden hit Romney for “reflexively” criticizing Obama’s policies without offering alternatives.
“When he does venture a position, it’s a safe bet that he previously took exactly the opposite position and will probably change his mind again and land in the wrong place — far out of the mainstream,” Biden said in a statement.
Obama sought in his address to raise the stakes for Romney’s speech, casting himself as a steady commander in chief tested by two wars and the successful raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
Romney raised money in California on Monday, and he offered a preview of his latest critique of Obama. He told about 400 supporters at a hotel in Irvine that “the consequence of American weakness is seen around us in the world.”
Before the VFW, Obama touted his record as one of promises kept: end the war in Iraq, wind down the conflict in Afghanistan and go after the al-Qaida leader behind the 9/11 attacks.
Without naming Romney, Obama indirectly suggested his opponent would have kept troops in Iraq indefinitely, and criticized him for opposing the president’s 2014 timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“That’s not a plan for America’s security,” Obama told veterans.
While Obama suggested that Romney was an inexperienced critic working to polish his own credentials, Romney readily turned from his chief argument that Obama is a failed steward of the economy and criticized the president on foreign and national-security policy.
“The president’s policies have made it harder to recover from the deepest recession in 70 years, exposed the military to cuts that no one can justify, compromised our national-security secrets, and in dealings with other nations, given trust where it is not earned, insult where it is not deserved, and apology where it is not due,” Romney said.
Romney also suggested Monday that the Obama administration had not been aggressive enough in deterring Iran’s nuclear ambitions or in trying to quell the violence in Syria. Romney said he agreed with Obama’s call for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s departure but said Obama had not shown proper leadership to force it.
“I think from the very beginning we misread the setting in Syria,” Romney told CNBC. “America should’ve come out very aggressively from the very beginning and said Assad must go. ... The world looks for American leadership and American strength.”
The Obama administration has long called for Assad to leave Syria, relying on a strategy of sanctions and international isolation to pressure Assad into handing over power.
The shift toward world affairs precedes Romney’s trip, beginning Tuesday, to Britain, Israel and Poland. It also comes as the campaigns resumed their aggressive tones after a three-day hiatus after the deadly shooting at a Colorado movie theater.
The Colorado massacre did not keep either candidate from chasing campaign contributions.
Romney headlined fundraisers over two days in California, netting $10 million.
Obama was expected to raise more than $6 million during two days of West Coast fundraising. He headlined three events in the San Francisco Bay area Monday and was attending four more Tuesday in Seattle and Portland, Ore.
Information for this article was contributed from San Francisco by Julie Pace and from Washington by Ben Feller, Jim Kuhnhenn and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 07/25/2012