By Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 24th, 2012
It’s a rare occurrence, but every now and again a member of the corporate media actually does his job.
ABC’s Jake Tapper recently held the Obama kids accountable for their clear abuse of the so-called ‘Espionage Act’. In short, Obama’s been using the law to intimidate and harass anyone in the federal government who may want to tell the public how the feds really do things.
At a press briefing earlier this week, Tapper pitched a good question about the Obama Administration’s bullying tactics to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:
The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed…How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?
You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked [the Espionage Act for] the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history.
You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad — you just don’t want it in the United States.
This is true: Before Obama, the Act had been used to punish leaks of classified info to the media on only three occasions. But the Obama Administration has misused the Espionage Act in order to punish six clear cases of whistleblowing, even as it praises government accountability and a vibrant free press for the rest of the world.
Carney provided what perhaps was the best argument under the circumstances. He rather unconvincingly said that he “would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons,” and told Tapper he should refer additional questions to the Justice Department.
It’s a typical statement from those in power. But Tapper pressed the matter:
“So the truth should come out abroad — [but] it shouldn’t come out here?”
Perhaps feeling cornered, Carney replied:
“Well, that’s not at all what I’m saying, Jake, and you know it’s not.”
We at The American Spark are not sure as to why ABC’s Jake Tapper – or anyone else – should know what the White House is saying when it fails to answer a straightforward question.
But we do know that if Obama gets his way, the American public will never be able to discover what the feds actually do in its name.
