Who Is the Senior Administration Leaker?

By Cernig

Who exactly is the senior administration official who anonymously leaked national secrets at a time of increased tensions and careful diplomacy over nuclear proliferation in the Middle East?

A remarkable claim by the Washington Post that North Korea "may be cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility in Syria" - and that, presumably, that facility was the target of a recent israeli strike, contains this passage:

The new information, particularly images received in the past 30 days, has been restricted to a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community unaware of it or uncertain of its significance, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

So if only a few senior officials knew about the details, it could only have been one of them, right?

It shouldn't take Hadley long to find out who it is and slap cuffs on him. I'll give Hadley a hint - start over at the Fourth Branch of government.

The article goes on to say that:

cautioned that initial reports of suspicious activity are frequently reevaluated over time and were skeptical that North Korea and Syria, which have cooperated on missile technology, would have a joint venture in the nuclear arena.

Which is what every other news service has said over the past few days after trying to substantiate lurid anonymously-sourced stories about North Korea or Iran giving Syria nukes or nuclear technology, which the Israelis then bombed. There's no there there. But John Bolton, neoconservative loudmouth and war-fiend, says it is "legitimate to ask questions" - and that will be the war-hypers' defense as they bang the drums ever louder.

Are the entire mainstream media asleep at their keyboards? Or are they just so addicted to their "anonymous official sources" that, like heroin junkies who know how damaging their addiction is, they can't give those sources up even when they have been f**ked over so many times?

A case in point is the developing news of CONservative man Alexis Debat - luminary of the Nixon Centre, speaker to The National Interest and ABC consultant. He's been caught making up interviews with prominent names and making up academic credentials - which casts every piece of reporting he's ever been involved with into doubt.

Prominent among those is a recent article by reliable foreign conduit for neoconservative propaganda, Sarah Baxter at the London Times which said, again resting on what high-level anonymous sources had supposedly told Debat, that the U.S. was preparing plans for an airstrike on Iran.

I'm with Will Attywood, Debat has a serious whiff of Fourth Branch too.

How long before the MSM simply refuses to quote, and even outs, these anonymous high level sources at the White House? My guess is never, but I'd love to be surprised.