It's like somebody pricked the White House and it can't stop leaking. Why can't they control themselves from compromising vital operations in the War on Terror? First it was Plame, and then they ruined a one-in-a-million chance at infiltrating Al-Qaeda by announcing that we had flipped one Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, thereby ending his career as a double agent.
But it's not just the White House that does this–consider the Department of Homeland Security's announcement about the Orange Alert concerning New York City financial institutions. We announced that we had specific intelligence predicting an attack (British authorities later made what looked to be a related arrest) on specific targets, which were then named. I'm sorry, but that's just about the worst way to catch terrorists I can think of. I can just see the terrorist cell in question pick up the morning paper and say, "Huh… looks like we'll have to go with Plan B, I guess." On the other hand, announcing this terror alert did have the positive benefit of <b>making everybody even more crazy</b> from worrying about whether or not they were going to be blown up at work today. Everybody shits their pants except the terrorists. Good job.
There's a problem here, and as usual, it's kind of systemic. Imagine that you are the President of a country under attack by a nebulous terrorist organization. In order to carry out effective surveillance and interception of this group, your police and anti-terrorist units must work with a modicum of secrecy. However, the public wants to know that something is being done. There's a clear conflict of interests here–the more concrete evidence you give the people (represented here by the press–ha!) about what is being done, the more information you give the terrorists about your plans to foil them. But say nothing and you run the risk of the electorate thinking that you're doing nothing about the problem as well.
"But wait," I hear you cry, "doesn't leaking pertinent information automatically invalidate that information?" Yes, yes it does. The response to "we flipped an Al-Qaeda man and now he's working as a double agent" is, "not any more he isn't."
I put it to you, readers, why does the White House keep compromising national security? It's not helping them at the polls. Even accepting that the administration is damned if they do (disclose sensitive info) and damned if they don't (give people specific instances of what they're doing to combat terror), WHY DON'T THEY JUST PICK THE ONE THAT HELPS THE COUNTRY?
