LITTLE ROCK — THE ALWAYS quotable Charles Barkley once claimed he had been misquoted—in his own autobiography. But his fans and even the media forgave him. Quickly. He was—he is—one of the most outspoken athletes of his time, always good for a laugh, and he tells everything with the bark off. So what if a professional athlete happened to use a ghostwriter for his book and wasn’t all too thrilled about some of the comments he’d made in it? Sir Charles was just being Sir Charles.
A U.S. senator should be a bit more careful. Especially one chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee.
This is some walk-back, folks:
Way back on Monday, Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California who’s in charge of that not unimportant aforementioned intelligence committee, was at the World Affairs Council doing senior senator stuff. Somebody decided to ask her about all those leaks earlier this summer of classified information about U.S. cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program. The details showed up on the front page of the New York Times and everywhere else.
As she’s done before, the Hon. Dianne Feinstein denounced the leaks. As she should have. Party loyalty or no party loyalty, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee has a responsibility to safeguard state secrets—and make sure others do, too. So once again Senator Feinstein blasted those responsible for revealing details about how our cyberattacks are crippling Iran’s nuclear program, maybe with help from Israeli intelligence. And, at least on Monday, the senator didn’t seem to care if her words offended:
“The White House has to understand that some of this is coming from its ranks. I don’t know specifically where, but I think they have to begin to understand that, and do something about it.”
Context is big in the news these days when it comes to pols speaking without a TelePrompTer, so let’s also note that Senator Feinstein went on to say the president himself probably isn’t responsible for picking up the phone and letting the world know everything he knows thanks to his daily briefings. As she explained: “He has his daily brief, called the PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, early every morning. And so he gets briefing from intelligence—I don’t believe for a moment that he goes out and talks about it. I don’t think the briefers go out and talk about it. But who knows who else. And I think that the importance of this has to be really set by the president himself.”
Fair enough. Sound enough. Tough enough. And reasonable enough, even for a United States senator.
This being a campaign year, the loyal opposition noted the senator’s comments—and ran with them. Mitt Romney, speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars the next day, mentioned the senator’s statement, and blasted the administration for the leaks:
“Whoever provided classified information to the media, seeking political advantage for the administration, must be exposed, dismissed and punished. The time for stonewalling is over.”
Fair enough. Sound enough. Tough enough. And reasonable enough, even for a presumptive presidential nominee as this year’s campaign heats up.
None of the president’s men—and women—should feel free to just call up the New York Times any time they want and divulge secret, detailed information about this country’s covert operations. No matter how devoted they are to making this president look like some great espionage agent and general genius. Which is what seems to have happened back in June.
If even a senator from the president’s own party thinks she needs to mention the problem, surely an opponent of the president’s can do the same.
EXCEPT . . . Dianne Feinstein was having no part of Mitt Romney’s quoting her. She said she was “disappointed” in Mitt Romney. And she “shouldn’t have speculated” about the leaks. And she knew “for a fact” that the president is troubled about them.
Putting aside how anybody can know for a fact what’s inside the head of somebody else, she’s probably right about the president’s being troubled about the leaks—now. Because now there’s an investigation going on. But where was he while the New York Times was running those stories making him look all masterful and presidential in the summer of an election year? Answer: Basking quietly in the free campaign advertising.
Senator Feinstein can be disappointed all she wants. But she said what she said earlier, and when she did, she was dead right. And the loyal opposition, in this case Mitt Romney, is right, too: If somebody in the administration is leaking secrets to the press to help the president politically, that somebody needs to go. Or as Mitt Romney put it, they should be “exposed, dismissed and punished.” Senator Dianne Feinstein might have thought as much herself as far back as Monday.
Editorial, Pages 18 on 07/27/2012