So it turns out that McClatchy, not Eddie Snowden, is this year’s biggest enemy of the state

[kpete]

So it turns out that McClatchy, not Eddie Snowden, is this year’s biggest enemy of the state:

As the nation’s spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor. [...]

McClatchy Newspapers first reported on the conversations between Mr. Zawahri and Mr. Wuhayshi on Aug. 4. Two days before that, The New York Times agreed to withhold the identities of the Qaeda leaders after senior American intelligence officials said the information could jeopardize their operations. After the government became aware of the McClatchy article, it dropped its objections to The Times’s publishing the same information, and the newspaper did so on Aug. 5.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/qaeda-plot-leak-has-undermined-us-intelligence.html?hp&_r=1&pagewanted=all&

I lack the national security expertise of some of the commenters here, so I’ll leave it to them to determine the exact levels of vilification and punishment these McClatchy traitors deserve.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2013/09/30/cheer-up-beautiful-people/

[pscot]

1. They better stay off planes

with Evo Morales.

[KoKo]

2. I kind of like this Comment from NYT reader on that article:

The article doesn't have any named sources and read like NSA unsourced blather with an agenda to me, but this sort of summed up my feelings:

----------------------


NYT Commenter:

Sequel
Boston

I'm not quite willing to accept this strange thesis from an anonymous source. Readers have no way of knowing if this intelligence official's remarks mirror a consensus of intelligence analysts, or whether they reflect some other focus.

The willingness to draw a comparison between two unrelated events (Snowden and the Yemeni interception of Zawahiri's message) suggest that there is an anticipated political gain in the mind of this source ... which coincidentally, is also a leak, and therefore as likely to alert terrorists as the other info.

Perhaps some investigative reporting is in order?

Sept. 30, 2013 at 10:26 a.m.
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