Leakers Not Satisfied With Results

Dem leadership, clearly upset that the ploy of leaking only portions of the NIE report to the media in the final weeks of election season didn't pan out as they hoped, have responded by deepening their attack on American security.

It's not enough that the weekend leak resulted in a boost for terrorist recruitment and morale; now they want the entire report divulged, despite the safe assumption that portions of it remain classified in order to protect intelligence assets and the country.

... Democrat Senators Edward Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin said the public needed to know more from the report and accused the administration of selective declassification.

"The American people deserve the full story, not those parts of it that the Bush administration selects. President Bush should declassify the entire NIE," Senator Kennedy said.

They also called for a briefing behind closed doors with John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. (BBC)

Yeah, and the American people deserved a better story than that leaded by Dem ops and/or their sympathizers on Saturday for Sunday's papers.

And as for the Negroponte briefing, the Intelligence Committees have been briefed; that's all that needs to happen, or should happen. The Dems have shown they cannot be trusted with sensitive information.

Don't you think that we're done with this matter, other than tracking down the leakers? Sure, it'll be fine to throw a few journalists in jail for a while for not revealing their sources, and it'll be good to subpoena some Sept. 10ers at Langley and their friends on Congressional staffs. But to continue to play out the NIE as theater benefits only bin Laden and crew.

The report says what it says: Fighting terrorism is a messy, messy thing because they're a nasty, nasty enemy -- but it beats not fighting terrorism. Some ups, some downs, as should be expected. What would we learn from more disclosure? A half dozen more lines for Dems to use and a half dozen more for the GOP?

That's not the purpose of the NIE, and if the Dems had any sense, they'd acknowledge that.

Related Tags: Politics, NIE, National Intelligence Estimate, DNC, Clinton, Kennedy