THE NSA INTERCEPT LEAK DAMAGED USA SECURITY - AND WAS THEREFORE AN ACT OF TREASON

Many on the Left have criticized folks like me for claiming that the NYTIMES NSA intercept leak damaged our national security and is therefore not only a crime under the Intelligence Whistleblower Protection Act, but TREASON.

They argue - as theater maven Frank Rich (and now national securtiy expert) does in today's NYTIMES - that terrorist already presumed all of this, so it's NOT news. The only newswprthy part of this leak - according to Rich& Co. - was that the intecepts were done without a court-order. And the terrorists couldn't care less about that.

I disagree. Below I argued that CONFIRMING what terrorists merely SUSPECT does obviously give a new advantage to the terrorists that they otherwise would NOT have had. (As anyone who paid any attention to the WMD issue must admit: CONFIRMED intel is better than inferred/suspected/deductive intel!) And this confirmation/certitude tips off the terorist and enables him - YEA INSTRUCTS HIM - to re-allocate resources in order to change their SOP when communicating to agents in the USA - in order to make them less suspectible to interception. This is irrefutable. And it means that the leak damged our security and aided the enemy - hence it was treason.

But the NYTIMES NSA intercept leak actually hurt USA security in a MUCH more potentially damaging way: It alerted US PERSONS (including US citizens) that their electronic communications with overseas al Qaeda agents (or their affiliates) was subject to interception.

AND, these US persons might very well include some of al Qaeda's least suspicious, most valued and most sophisticated agents - AND EVEN SOME double agents in the police, the FBI, the CIA, the MSM, even some M.E.S. college professors, and even members of the US armed forces (all with good access to the ACLU!).

These US agents of al Qaeda would probably be relatively very well-informed people who would have assumed that their communications wouldn't be subject to interception unless and until their overseas contact was captured or killed, AND they probably assumed - PRIOR TO THE NYTIMES NSA LEAK - that they would hear that their contact was captured or killed BEFORE any intercept could be arranged with the FISA court. The enemy might even have had agents with access to to the FISC surveillance warrants list. (MAYBE THEY GOT THIS FROM ONE OF THE LEAKERS?)

Maybe that's why the POTUS decided that he had to use his Article II powers to circumvent the FISC ON THE MOST SENSITIVE AND IMPORTANT TARGETS. (After all, the POTUS did ask for and receive thousands of FISA warrants over the last four years while also pursuing these focused/selective court-orderless NSA intercepts.) That's why this leak CHANGES EVERYTHING.

As a result of this leak, it is reasonable to expect that all of the electronic communications of the enemy - (including the most dangerous communications they have: BETWEEN OPERATIVES OVERSEAS AND OPERATIVES HERE!) will become MUCH less suspectible to interception. This makes us more vulnerable to an attack. Which means the leak helps the enemy and is TREASON.

UPDATE: JOE KLEIN of TIME corroborates my analysis (hat tip the invaluable and brilliant POWERLINE):

It would have been a scandal if the NSA had not been using these tools to track down the bad guys. There is evidence that the information harvested helped foil several plots and disrupt al-Qaeda operations.

There is also evidence, according to U.S. intelligence officials, that since the New York Times broke the story, the terrorists have modified their behavior, hampering our efforts to keep track of them—but also, on the plus side, hampering their ability to communicate with one another.

EXACTLY as I said. EXACTLY. Which is why leaking was not only a crime it was TREASON. As was publishing the leak. TREASON. Find them; charge them; try them; convict them, and then, execute them. That will end the problem of leaks of classified information for a while.