The Leaker and the Media
April 15th, 2023 4:00 PM
In the aftermath of the outing and arrest of Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, the 21-year old leaker of national security documents, over there at The New York Sun, journalist Matthew Rice headlines a very appropriate question.
Did the Press Find the Leaker Before Law Enforcement? Or Did the Law Use the Press To Flush Him Out?Rice writes this:
Accused leaker Jack Teixeira, 21, is arrested shortly after the New York Times showed up at his mother’s doorstep, with Teixeira then arriving at the house in a pickup truck.
The press appears to have discovered the identity of the young man who released highly classified information related to national security — and published his name — before he was arrested.
The bizarre situation has left people slack-jawed, wondering if the government’s mole-hunting operation was simply incompetent, or if it instead used the press to pursue the leaker by means that would not be admissible in court, then swooped in to make an arrest.
Or is the answer a combination of both?
After running through a string of murder mysteries that were solved with a combination of persistent journalists working with law enforcement officials, Rice returns to the subject of alleged leaker Jack Teixeira and ends by asking:
In solving cold case murders such as these, law enforcement is believed to have worked hand in hand with the journalists and armchair detectives who weren’t bound by the same legal strictures, then pounced once enough evidence was accumulated.Hmmm.
Was this the same case with the media and Mr. Teixeira? Or are journalists simply better at mole hunting? It remains to be seen.
There is indeed a curiosity here.
The day Teixeirawas arrested, Fox’s Tucker Carlson had on longtime journalist Glenn Greenwald to discuss what had happened. Greenwald is the journalist who published previously unknown information on various American and British surveillance programs based on classified material provided by Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency computer consultant. Agree with him or not, Greenwald is consistent in demanding journalist hew to one standard - disclose what they know. (Bold print for emphasis supplied.)
Said Greenwald to Tucker the other night:I can’t think of an incident, Tucker, that reveals more vividly the real function of our nation’s largest media corporations than what just happened here. If you’re a real journalist, somebody who’s devoted to transparency, bringing, shining a light on the most powerful government actors when they lied to the American people and informing the public you’d be celebrating this person who stepped forward and risked his security to show his fellow citizens that the government was lying about this incredibly important war with a nuclear armed power. That we have absolute troops deployed on the ground in Ukraine, there’s going to be no diplomatic resolution throughout 2023, that Zelensky is planning on using our weapons to strike deep into Russia, which we were told would never happen, risking explanation.Put succinctly?
He did the job which journalists claim to do, which is show the public the truth. If you work for the intelligence agencies, you would be furious at this person. You would hate him because he revealed that you just lied. He exposed the truth about what you were doing.
What’s amazing is The New York Times, The Washington Post, all the people who were at that Pentagon briefing today, think the way the CIA and the Pentagon think. They hate this person. It was The New York Times and The Washington Post that did the FBI’s work and found the leaker and led the FBI to him. They’re demanding that he be punished. They’re demanding that the government clamp down and keep things more and more secret. What kind of journalist would ever do that, would want to see a leaker exposed and punished and then demand that the government keep even more secrets. But that is what these media corporations are there to do. They love leaks, when the CIA and Homeland Security tell them to leak. That’s when they disseminate propaganda to the public.
Like they did during the Trump years when they leaked the transcript between Michael Flynn and Ambassador Kislyak, the most serious kind of leaking crime. The Washington Post did that. Nobody looked for that leaker, nobody cared, everybody cheered because it served the interests of the security state. But when it comes to transparency that undermines the agenda of these agencies and that proves to the American people what the truth is, it is amazing that these journalists are on the side of the government and will actually hunt down the leaker and demand that he be punished even more.
It appears the mainstream media hunted down Jack Teixeira and in one fashion or another tipped the FBI as to just who this leaker was. Indeed, The Washington Post headlined this week:
The biggest revelations from The Post’s document leaks investigationThat story revealing:
A day after The Post published details of the leaker on April 12, authorities confirmed that investigators were focused on Teixeira, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard. He was arrested by the FBI on Thursday afternoon.Got that? The Post went out of its way to publish “details of the leaker” on April 12th. The very next day, thusly informed by the media, the FBI swoops in with heavy duty military vehicles and heavily armed soldiers to arrest their 21-year-old man.
Notice anything here?
Can you name the leaker in that tale Greenwald recalls of Trump’s incoming national security advisor General Michael Flynn?
No? How about the leaker of the famous Pentagon Papers? Of course you recall Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was made into a media hero, lionized in print and film as a genuine hero. And just who was the president when that happened? That would be Republican President Richard Nixon.
And the leaker who brought an abrupt end to General Flynn’s career while embarrassing his incoming boss, Republican President Trump? No word on who that was. None.
Similarly, early in Trump’s term, an anonymous leaker released two transcripts of Trump phone calls with the then-President of Mexico and the Australian Prime Minister. The media showed no interest in finding the leaker.
And who is the President right now who is being embarrassed by young Jack Teixeira? That would be Democrat President Joe Biden. With the media in the form of The Washington Post, The New York Times and others in the media targeting Teixeira.
Here’s but one sample liberal media headline on Teixeira from, of course, NPR:
Teixeira's online friends were fascinated by Orthodox Catholicism, guns and racist memesGot that? This leaker who had the gall to embarrass the Biden Administration is a religious extremist, a gun nut and a racist.
For that matter, recall the famous leak last year from inside the Supreme Court that signaled Roe v. Wade was about to be overturned? Strangely, we still have no word on who did that. With the field of suspects necessarily very small and limited to clerks and a handful of others inside the Court.
The pattern is clear. If a leaker is leaking information that embarrasses a Republican president, that leaker is either lionized as a hero if revealed, or deliberately not revealed. The media hunt for the Flynn leaker -- who embarrassed Trump -- was non existent. He or she had to be protected from a president who would go after him or her.
The media hunt for the Supreme Court leaker, a leaker who caused an uproar for conservative judges that resulted in threats of violence directed at the conservative Justices in their homes? A leak that could easily have embarrassed the liberals on the Court had it been of their clerks? Non-existent.
Jack Teixeira ’s leak has embarrassed Democrat President Joe Biden. Thus the liberal media swarms to root out the SOB who dared to do this, in this latest case identifying Teixeira quickly and lending a hand to the FBI so they can swoop in and arrest him.
In short? If Donald Trump were still president and Jack Teixeira did exactly what he has just done to the Biden Administration except that he had embarrassed Trump?
The “mainstream media” would have a new hero.
