DURING THE Iran-Contra scandal, commentator Michael Kinsley (late of this page) memorably made what he called "the case for glee." Amid much journalistic fretting that no one should enjoy the Reagan administration's troubles, Kinsley replied that it was natural, even healthy, for the opposition to to crack a smile.
With the Valerie Plame case, however, too many journalists and liberals are letting glee overtake principle. They are delighting in the indictment of former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby, in the departure of reporter Judith Miller from the New York Times, and now in the apology that the Washington Post's Bob Woodward gave for not telling his editors that an administration source told him in June 2003 of Plame's status as a CIA agent. (For any reader opening the newspaper for the first time in two years, White House officials leaked Plame's status to reporters after her husband went public with information partly discrediting the administration's case for the Iraq war.)
As a critic of both the Iraq war and the administration's political ruthlessness, I appreciate the satisfaction of seeing a White House operative nabbed for what seems like petty revenge. As a former and still-occasional journalist, I agree with the criticisms of Miller's credulous prewar reporting, which helped legitimize claims that Saddam Hussein posed a danger to the United States. As a former assistant (and still a friend) to Woodward, I've often heard the rap that he's too close to those in power.
However, I also believe that the frame that the news media have used for presenting this story is badly warped.
Instead of dwelling on horse-race details about who leaked what to whom and when, pundits should be debating the fundamental issue: Should leaking be criminalized in the first place? Instead of cheering the Plame investigation and vilifying the reporters caught in its web, we should be deploring the probe and applauding the reporters for gaining access to classified material, however ugly the leakers' motives.
A generation ago, high officials -- including Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon -- routinely hid facts about the Vietnam War, Watergate and other matters. We discovered how our leaders cynically used national security as an excuse to shield their deeds from view. Americans grew outraged and implemented reforms to lessen government secrecy.
