It isn't every day that the ridiculous hypocrisy of our criminal justice system is exposed so bluntly.
The New York Times reports this morning that Thomas Drake, a former official of the National Security Agency, has been indicted in Baltimore:
In a rare legal action against a government employee accused of leaking secrets, a grand jury has indicted a former senior National Security Agency official on charges of providing classified information to a newspaper reporter in hundreds of e-mail messages in 2006 and 2007.
The indictment, approved Wednesday by a grand jury in Baltimore and made public on Thursday, does not name either the reporter or the newspaper that received the information.
But the description applies to articles written by Siobhan Gorman, then a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, that examined in detail the failings of several major N.S.A. programs, costing billions of dollars, using computers to collect and sort electronic intelligence. The efforts were plagued with technical flaws and cost overruns.
While Mr. Drake is facing jail for having made efforts to inform the public about illegal government surveillance programs that cost you and I billions of the taxes we paid yesterday and were not successful at achieving their goals, the Times also reports on other intelligence officials who intentionally destroyed evidence of violations of both U.S. and international law:
Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal C.I.A. document released Thursday.
Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, Mr. Goss told Mr. Rodriguez that he "agreed" with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Mr. Rodriguez offered to "take the heat" for destroying the tapes.
Of course, Goss could easily joke about his willingness to "take the heat" for destroying the evidence of torture committed by agents of the US government. Because there was nothing more likely than that the government, under any administration, would do everything it could to prevent itself from having to hold anyone accountable for gross abuses of power. And lest you comfort yourselves with the fantasy that these intelligence officers didn't realize that they were intentionally destroying evidence:
According to former C.I.A. officials, Mr. Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed in November 2005 because he feared that if the tapes were to become public it would put undercover C.I.A. officers in legal and physical jeopardy.
And so we have a story of two government officials. One broke the law to inform the public of matters of great importance. The other broke the law to conceal evidence of government wrongdoing in matter of great importance.
Which one of those men should be free today?