re: #5 A Mom Anon

I understand that if you start prosecuting or going after reporters it’s going to put a chill on the info they can get from sources. Which in turn makes it harder for whistleblowers to come forward and report waste, fraud, abuse and just plain illegal stuff. And I think we do have the right to know how our government agencies function.

About this, I just posted in the previous thread:

True — but the same thing holds for governments. When leaks like this happen, foreign governments are much less likely to cooperate with the US because they lose trust that the US won’t blow an operation’s cover. This is why the DOJ is being so aggressive about this one - the damage to our intelligence on Al Qaeda was substantial.