A White House with No Secrets

In a Wall Street Journal article last week,  there [Adam Entous, Cabinet Splits on Accord in Syria] is proof positive that discussions of secrets in the White House will eventually find their way into the public, no matter how sensitive they may be.

This particular article is about Syria, where the Russians have decided to take a stand and defend an unpopular government leader.  The Russians haven't denied their actions flying planes clearly marked and dropping bombs everywhere.  They are eliminating any chance of getting a moderate government in Syria and doing it in the name of "counter terrorism".  Assad's enemies are obviously terrorists.

The gist of the Journal article is that there are splits between the State Department and Defense and CIA over how to react to the Russians.  Defense and CIA want more aggressive action against the Russians and State which is afraid we would be pulled into a proxy war with Russia.  The source for the article says the Russian bombing strikes on rebels supplied and trained by the CIA has caused consternation at the Agency.

This is usually the patter of a "whiner" who is losing an argument against the weight of others.  He, or she, goes to the press and makes this argument public in the hope of having public opinion sway the politics.   It seems to be a little more in this case, since as the article points out, "Ms Rice, Mr. McDonough and other senior national security officials at the White House have voiced skepticism in the past about the CIA effort".   This is a pointed attack on the support which may have been given by CIA to rebels fighting Assad.  This is not the kind of thing to be discussed with a reporter under any circumstances, yet someone did.

First, this is the only country in the world that exposes this kind of thing to public scrutiny.  I can't imagine the Russians having something like the internal discussions on who should be supported in the Ukraine coming out on the front page of a newspaper.  They have some sense about what to talk to the press about and what not.  Apparently, the people going to these classified meetings in the White House do not.

Second, talking about things that are classified with a reporter is a crime.  These kinds of operations are very highly classified and seldom even get on the private email servers of those at the State Department.  Most of them know better than to take a discussion like this to the press.

Let's stop accepting excuses that "everybody does it" because not everybody does.  These are Top Secret discussions that don't need to be disclosed to anyone, but especially to the Russians who will know for sure they were bombing the right people.  If there are disagreements in the White House then keep them there and keep that quiet.  When someone goes to the press with something like this, find out who they are and take away their security clearance.  Then, make sure they don't attend anymore White House meetings.