Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the Obama administration is releasing and leaking too much information about terror plots and intelligence operations, including details about the foiled underwear bomber who turned out to be a double agent working with the CIA.
“If they’ve got a double agent, then why do you have to disclose it?” he said in in an interview Wednesday with The Washington Times-affiliated “America’s Morning News” radio program. “The intelligence value of that could still be exploited before they sounded off about it.
“The same was true of the handling of the [Osama] bin Laden killing itself, where the president immediately talked about us having seized a trove of intelligence, also talked about us having discovered al Qaeda safehouses,” the former Bush administration attorney general said. “Of course anybody who was dealing with bin Laden at the time would immediately change his method of operation, his location and so on, so that whatever intelligence we got was squandered by making that statement.
“I’ve got a big problem … when you go out and leak details about an operation regardless of whether it’s been completed or not,” he said.
Mr. Mukasey, who has written a book, “How Obama Has Mishandled the War on Terror,” criticizing the administration’s handling of national security, also penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week questioning whether concerns about how Mr. Obama is perceived in the press have unduly influenced national security decisions in the White House.
In the Wall Street Journal piece, the former attorney general says a memo from Leon Panetta, then CIA director, seems to lay the groundwork for a White House effort to shift blame from the president to Naval Special Operations Commander Adm. Bill McRaven if the bin Laden raid went awry.
“It certainly has that aroma about it. A memo like this doesn’t arise in a vacuum,” Mr. Mukasey said Wednesday.
• David Eldridge can be reached at deldridge@washingtontimes.com.
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