National intelligence leaks in the name of exposing what the leakers claim is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy by the U.S. government are wrong-minded and causing a multifaceted crisis, including giving terrorists and countries unfriendly to the U.S. critical state secrets, former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said at an appearance in Atlanta on Thursday.
“It is not simply the leaks themselves that have done and continue to do the damage,” he said, referring specifically to the revelations last year that the National Security Agency was collecting telephone users’ records. “There has been a cascade of misinformation about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering capability that has generated pressure from the left and the right in the political spectrum to severely restrict the gathering of intelligence that is this country’s first, and in some cases only, line of defense.”
