The editor whose reporter has learned of such a secret operation thereupon splashes it across the front page of his paper, or on his TV network's evening news hour. He will, of course, take care to interview one or more Democratic members of Congress who weren't in on the secret briefings, and they can be depended upon to shriek that every American's privacy is being invaded unconstitutionally by this dastardly administration. (Congressman Harold Ford of Tennessee charged the other day that the government is "eavesdropping" on innocent citizens -- the falsest imaginable accusation.) As for the Democrats who were briefed, they tend to hint that they weren't told "everything," or just prudently keep their mouths shut.
But that's not even the most delicious result of the scam. Dana Priest, a Washington Post reporter, has already received a Pulitzer prize for her report, obtained from a leaker, on the CIA's supposedly "secret" prisons in eastern Europe for top-level Al Qaeda detainees. One wonders if Osama bin Laden has some similar sort of Medal of Honor for American reporters, not to mention CIA agents, who expose our counter-terrorist operations, to his benefit.
The leakers, in any case, have the satisfaction of seeing their vindictive hatred of the Bush administration (whatever its origin -- being passed over for promotion, perhaps?) take the form of political damage it can ill afford.
To be sure, one alleged leaker was caught recently. Mary O. McCarthy, a CIA officer who had contributed the maximum allowed by law to the Kerry campaign in 2004, flunked a lie-detector test and confessed, according to the CIA, that she "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence." Later, after consulting a lawyer, she revised her story and denied she had done anything wrong. (One of her media contacts, by the way, was reportedly Dana Priest.)
Thus far has concern for our national security deteriorated, in the eagerness of the Bush administration's enemies to bring it down.