Was the leak as bad as the disclosure ?

There are two related dangers that grow out of the Washington Post story. The first and most obvious one is that the president disclosed highly classified material provided by an ally to an enemy who may use it to uncover intelligence sources and means. Standing alone, this poses grave risks to our national security, as virtually every commentator has recognized.

But would the risks have been as great if the story had not been leaked to the Washington Post and published? That's a fair question to ask. And the answer is not simple.

Had President Donald Trump's mistake remained a secret known only to our national security establishment (and of course the Russians ), the Islamic State group would probably never have learned of it. (Russia and the Islamic State are not exactly on speaking terms.) The Islamic State group learned about it only because current and former U.S. intelligence agents leaked it to the media, which published it. The Islamic State group may now use this information to track down and kill informers or double agents who may have provided the information to our ally. They may also speed up their plans to use laptops to blow up commercial airlines. None of this may have happened without the leak and publication.

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The same may be true – though this is less certain – of our allies who secretly provide us intel, including the country that provided the intel that Trump disclosed to the Russians. The leak and publication may cause friendly intelligence agencies to be more cautious about sharing delicate material with us.

There can be little doubt, therefore, that the leak and publication of the Trump disclosures to the Russians may have caused more damage to our national security than the Trump disclosures alone had they remained secret. This reality raises fundamental questions about the costs and benefits of leaking and publishing leaks.

There is , of course, a major difference between leaking and publishing. The people who leaked the story to the Washington Post committed a serious crime. They may regard what they did as civil disobedience for a higher purpose, but leaking classified or secret information is a crime. Publishing it is not, because the First Amendment protects the publication of leaked material even it is classified.

That doesn't mean the Post was right in publishing it. Reasonable people might disagree about that. The benefits to democracy from disclosing the malfeasance of our president must be balanced against the additional damage to our national security from telling the world about that malfeasance.

The responsible media often strikes such balances, as they did in this case by publishing the story without telltale details such as the name of the city where the intel was gathered. Responsible media often delay publication of sensitive stories at the behest of the government when lives are at risk. But rarely do they kill a story, especially one that exposes misconduct at the highest levels.

So I have no criticism of the newspapers that published what they did. But I have real concerns about the current and former intelligence officials who took the law – and our national security – into their own unaccountable hands by deciding to disclose a story, whose very disclosure they had to know would add to the harm already caused by Trump's secret disclosure to the Russians. My concerns are heightened by the fact that these law violators are anonymous and will remain so because of the journalist-source privilege, which is generally a valuable protector of press freedom.

In a democracy, important decisions affecting national security should not be made by shadowy anonymous intel agents who have no public accountability. I understand that without whistleblowers democracy may lack information necessary to hold elected officials politically and legally accountable, but the price may sometimes be too high.