Even Ratfucking Begins with Foreplay
Now Playing: "Can't Get There from Here" by R.E.M.
Courtesy of Duncan Black, have a look at this post over at Editor & Publisher. It is a letter from former CBS News national security correspondent Bill Lynch on the subject of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's apparent possession of a security clearance from the Department of Defense, which she would have needed as an embedded reporter with the United States military. Says Lynch (hyperlink added):

There is one enormous journalism scandal hidden in Judith Miller's Oct. 16th first person article about the (perhaps lesser) CIA leak scandal. And that is Ms. Miller's revelation that she was granted a DoD security clearance while embedded with the WMD search team in Iraq in 2003.

This is as close as one can get to government licensing of journalists and the New York Times (if it knew) should never have allowed her to become so compromised. It is all the more puzzling that a reporter who as a matter of principle would sacrifice 85 days of her freedom to protect a source would so willingly agree to be officially muzzled and thereby deny potentially valuable information to the readers whose right to be informed she claims to value so highly.

Hmmm. The plot thickens. But it gets better (emphasis added):

I am a former White House and national security correspondent and have had plenty of access to classified information. When I divulged it, it was always with a common sense appraisal of the balance between any potential harm done and the public's right to know. If I had doubts, I would run it by officers whose judgement I trusted. In my experience, defense and intelligence officials routinely share secrets with reporters in the full expectation they will be reported. But if any official had ever offered me a security clearance, my instincts would have sent me running. I am gravely disappointed Ms. Miller did not do likewise.

So, here's an example of a news media reporter who had "plenty" of access to classified information that he divulged. Does this mean that we will now be treated to the farce of liberals and Leftists complaining that we've been learning too much from our Government? Why wasn't it treason when Lynch was divulging classified information without a security clearance?

Oh, I'm not going to say it's because he was with CBS News! Ha, ha, ha...

Scramble, comrades! Gotta get that story straight!