The Bush administration is seeking to put a lid on leaks of classified information and is threatening to prosecute journalists. Ironically they are threatening the very thing White House spokesman Trent Duffy claims they are protecting — “right to free speech and the First Amendment.”

The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI’s Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether to approve tougher penalties for leaking.

Media watchers, lawyers and editors say “the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation.” They also claim that “they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House.”

“There’s a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public’s business risk being branded traitors,” said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. “I don’t know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad.”

Disclosing classified information without authorization is against the law. However leaks are a reality in Washington and without them American’s would be in the dark about the dirty dealings of our government. Imagine no Pentagon Papers, imagine no Deep Throat… Imagine no freedom of speech.

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