(Un)classified

CNN ran an interview yesterday with Robert Draper, a GQ reporter who wrote an "expose" about Donald Rumsfeld, including some top secret briefing documents Rumsfeld purportedly prepared for President Bush. (A former aide said Rumsfeld didn't prepare the documents; military officials did.) The classified documents were recently given to the reporter by someone in the administration who must have had security clearance to get his hands on them and who was outraged by something in the documents.

The cause of the outrage and the focus of the CNN interview? The fact that the cover sheet for some of these intelligence briefing reports included a verse from the Old Testament in italics -- sandwiched between a large bold headline and a large color photo of a war scene. Yes, a government official dared to put a Bible verse on a top secret classified intelligence document. To prove it, CNN -- and I'm sure the GQ article -- ran pictures of these top secret classified intelligence documents for all the world to see.

The verses shown came from the Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Joshua -- all books of the Bible recognized by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Joshua is a history and Ecclesiastes and Psalms are often included in academic literature anthologies. Joshua also was a military strategist as was King David, who wrote most of the Psalms. Quoting them is rather like quoting Gen. Patton or Napoleon or Alexander the Great. But that's beside the point.

What I want to know is where is the outrage about a person with security clearance taking it upon himself to illegally leak top secret documents to the media just because he doesn't like the way they're put together. What else did this person leak?

Having a quote from King David on one of our government documents is far less dangerous than having someone we're supposed to be able to trust with our national security running around exposing classified information. If everyone with a security clearance could unilaterally and arbitrarily decide what should be released, we would have no national security.

A security clearance is a privilege and a huge responsibility. Violating that clearance has consequences for the country. And it should have consequences for the people who violate it -- whether they're government officials, politicians or the media.