That slithering reptile stole govt secrets TO SELL A BOOK!
Jeffrey Toobin Preaches on Sanctity of Government Secrets Despite Once Stealing Classified Documents
By: Kevin Gosztola Tuesday August 20, 2013 10:00 pm
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Toobin’s campaign against Snowden and in defense of the government’s right to protect sensitive national security secrets is incredibly hypocritical, given his past history.
In journalist Michael Isikoff’s book,
Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story, he described how Toobin was caught “having absconded with large loads of classified and grand-jury related documents from the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh” in 1991:
Toobin, it turned out, had been using his tenure in Walsh’s office to secretly prepare a tell-all book about the Iran-contra case; the privileged documents, along with a meticulously kept private diary (in which the young Toobin, a sort of proto-Linda Tripp, had been documenting private conversations with his unsuspecting colleagues) were to become his prime bait to snare a book deal. Toobin’s conduct enraged his fellow lawyers in Walsh’s office, many of whom viewed his actions as an indefensible betrayal of the public trust. Walsh at one point even considered pressing for Toobin’s indictment.
Toobin was “petrified” that he would have to face criminal charges for stealing information for a rather dubious book deal. And, according to Isikoff, he either “feared dismissal and disgrace, or simply wanted to move on,” and he “resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn (where he had gone to work after Walsh) and abandoned the practice of law.”
Walsh’s memoir on the Iran-Contra investigation, Firewall, included more details on Toobin’s act:
During our negotiations over the timing of the book’s publication, Toobin and his publisher surprised us with a preemptive suit to enjoin me from interfering with the publication or punishing Toobin for having stolen hundreds of documents, some of them classified, and for exposing privileged information and material related to the grand jury proceedings. I could understand a young lawyer wanting to keep copies of his own work, but not copying material from the general files or the personal files of others.
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As Isikoff and Walsh’s accounts on Toobin show, Toobin is the last person who should be preaching about the sanctity of United States government secrets. He is the last one who should be climbing up on a high horse to share how government has a right to seize “stolen information” because he, himself, stole information.
The documents Toobin stole were not released to a news outlet to be reported on because he felt it was in the public interest. They were taken because he wanted to write a book that would help him make a name for himself and personally benefit him.
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http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/08/20/jeffrey-toobin-preaches-on-sanctity-of-government-secrets-despite-once-stealing-classified-documents/
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