“Not everybody who discloses classified information is a whistleblower,” replied Buttigieg, whose service as a U.S. Navy Intelligence reservist included a stint in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice drew condemnation from civil libertarians for aggressively pressing criminal charges against eight people accused of leaking classified information to the media. “That’s for the Department of Justice to evaluate whether there are convincing grounds for any kind of exceptions,” he said. (The Ukraine whistleblower reported his concerns to the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community.) Few of Buttigieg’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination have diverged from the consensus view of the U.S. national security establishment that unauthorized leakers who decline to take advantage of official whistleblower protections should be prosecuted.

Source: Huffington Post November 04, 2019 02:03 UTC