{"id":38870,"date":"2017-08-05T04:53:16","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T04:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=38870"},"modified":"2017-08-05T04:53:16","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T04:53:16","slug":"leak-investigations-triple-trump-sessions-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/leak-investigations-triple-trump-sessions-says.html","title":{"rendered":"Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Leak Investigations Triple Under Trump, Sessions Says:- Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Friday that the Justice Department is pursuing about three times as many leak investigations as were open at the end of the Obama era, a significant devotion of resources to hunt down disclosures that have plagued the Trump administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Sessions vowed that the Justice Department would not hesitate to bring criminal charges against people who had leaked classified information. He also announced that the F.B.I. had created a new counterintelligence unit to specialize in such cases.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI strongly agree with the president and condemn in the strongest terms the staggering number of leaks undermining the ability of our government to protect this country,\u201d he said. The announcement by Mr. Sessions comes 10 days after President Trump publicly accused his attorney general of being \u201cvery weak\u201d on pursuing these investigations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Sessions also said he had opened a review of Justice Department rules governing when investigators may issue subpoenas related to the news media and leak investigations. \u201cWe respect the important role that the press plays and will give them respect, but it is not unlimited,\u201d he said. \u201cThey cannot place lives at risk with impunity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The news conference came against the backdrop of repeated pressure by Mr. Trump, in public and in private, for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to search harder for people inside the government who have been telling reporters what was happening behind closed doors.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has been bedeviled by leaks large and small that have brought to light information ranging from White House infighting and the president\u2019s rancorous phone conversations with foreign leaders to what surveillance showed about contacts by Mr. Trump\u2019s associates with Russia \u2014 and even what Mr. Trump said to Russian visitors in the Oval Office about his firing of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not all leaks are illegal, and many of the disclosures about palace intrigue at the White House that have irritated Mr. Trump violated no law. However, the Espionage Act and several other federal laws do criminalize unauthorized disclosures about certain national security information, like surveillance secrets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Officials declined to discuss which specific leaks are under investigation or who the suspects may be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Several advocacy groups for reporters and First Amendment issues sharply criticized the statements made during the news conference, as did Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSessions talked about putting lives at risk,\u201d Mr. Baron said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t done that. What we\u2019ve done is reveal the truth about what administration officials have said and done. In many instances, our factual stories have contradicted false statements they\u2019ve made.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Matt Purdy, a deputy managing editor of The New York Times, said: \u201cThere\u2019s a distinction between revelations that make the government uncomfortable and revelations that put lives at risk. We have not published information that endangers lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Post and The Times declined to comment about whether the government had contacted them regarding leak investigations.<\/span><\/p>\n

In February, Mr. Trump said at a news conference that he had told Mr. Sessions to look into leaks \u2014 an unusual thing to say, since presidents generally try to avoid appearing as if they are asserting political control over law enforcement. Mr. Trump has continued to periodically demand a crackdown, including criticizing Mr. Sessions in Twitter posts for not doing more. On July 25, for example, the president wrote on Twitter, \u201cAttorney General Jeff Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In May, Mr. Trump himself disclosed sensitive intelligence to visiting Russian officials about an Islamic State plot, blurting out details that had been shared by Israel \u2014 a disclosure that some intelligence officials worried might have exposed an important Israeli government source. But presidents have the authority to declassify and disclose information at their discretion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once rare, leak cases have become far more common in the 21st century, in part because of electronic trails that make it easier for investigators to determine who had access to a leaked document and was in contact with a reporter. In early 2006, after The Times revealed the National Security Agency\u2019s warrantless surveillance program, the Bush administration created a dedicated task force to go after high-level leaks \u2014 making it a kind of predecessor to the new F.B.I. unit Mr. Sessions announced.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Obama administration oversaw around nine or 10 leak-related prosecutions, depending on how they are counted. That was more than all previous presidents combined, although two of them were investigations inherited from the Bush-era task force. And Mr. Trump has encouraged taking an even harder line.<\/span><\/p>\n

In February, Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, then the F.B.I. director, that the bureau should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information, according to a contemporaneous memo Mr. Comey wrote about the conversation. The government has never charged a reporter for publishing restricted information, and Mr. Sessions on Friday did not respond to a question about whether such a step was under consideration.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters in a subsequent briefing, Mr. Sessions\u2019s deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, demurred when asked whether the administration would prosecute reporters in relation to leaks, saying he would not \u201ccomment on hypotheticals.\u201d He also said the review of the leak investigation guidelines had just begun and it was not clear what, if anything, would be changed about them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The department\u2019s rules require investigators to exhaust all other ways to obtain the information they are seeking before examining reporters\u2019 phone logs or subpoenaing journalists for notes or testimony that could force them to help investigators identify their confidential sources, or face imprisonment for contempt. F.B.I. agents have long chafed under that restriction, which can slow their investigations but is intended to limit any chilling effect on the news gathering process.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2013, after a backlash in Congress and the news media over aggressive tactics to go after reporters\u2019 information in leak investigations, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. decided to revise those rules to further tighten limits on when the government is allowed to subpoena telephone companies for logs of a reporter\u2019s phone calls, which could reveal their confidential sources. The changes made it harder for law enforcement officials to obtain such logs without providing advance notice and giving news organizations a chance to contest the request in court.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tripling of open investigations since January, Mr. Sessions indicated, was driven by a surge in complaints by security agencies about unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said that during the first six months of the Trump administration, the Justice Department received nearly as many criminal referrals as it did during the three previous years combined.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two problems complicated assessments of those ratios. First, the department declined to disclose specific figures for the number of such referrals and open investigations. Moreover, its method of tracking such numbers conflates leaks to the news media with other types of unauthorized disclosures, like spying for a foreign power. It was not clear whether the ratios would shift if only leaks to journalists were considered.<\/span><\/p>\n

The department\u2019s conflation of different types of unauthorized disclosure investigations led to confusion when Mr. Sessions said the Justice Department has already handled four such cases this year, because there has been only one known new leak case in the Trump era so far: the charging in June of Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor working for the N.S.A., with sending an intelligence report about Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Rosenstein later clarified that only one of those four unauthorized disclosure cases specifically involved a leak to the news media.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Sessions was also joined in the news conference by Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence. The two are co-chairmen of an insider threat task force first established by the Obama administration in 2011 after Chelsea Manning\u2019s leak of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic and military files to WikiLeaks. Mr. Coats threatened to administratively discipline people suspected of leaking, apart from any prosecution.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstand this: If you improperly disclose classified information, we will find you, we will investigate you, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, and you will not be happy with the results,\u201d Mr. Coats said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/04\/us\/politics\/jeff-sessions-trump-leaks-attorney-general.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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