Department of Justice Could Go After Glenn Greenwald Over NSA Leak; What About Leon Panetta?
Panetta highly unlikely to face prosecution
Glenn Greenwald broke the news of a secret court order allowing the NSA to collect millions of telephone records. Now, the New York Times reports, Greenwald could face legal consequences:
The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers.
On Thursday night, he followed up with an article written with a Guardian reporter, Ewen MacAskill, that exposed an N.S.A. program, Prism, that has gathered information from the nation's largest Internet companies going back nearly six years.
"The N.S.A. is kind of the crown jewel in government secrecy. I expect them to react even more extremely," Mr. Greenwald said in a telephone interview. He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that "he should be worried," but he had decided that "what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it."
The Obama Administration has already prosecuted more alleged leakers (six) than all previous administrations combined. What about former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who's been fingered as the likely source for leaks obtained by Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers? No word at all yet about any kind of prosecution or consequences for the leak, which did not embarrass the administration the way leaks about their civil liberties violations have.