Like Tapped’s Nick Confessore, I can’t begin to understand why Sandy Berger’s inadvertent removal of some photocopies from the National Archives prompted a media frenzy, but Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-Ala.) leaking of classified information barely gets a blip.
Federal investigators concluded that Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) divulged classified intercepted messages to the media when he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, according to sources familiar with the probe.
Specifically, Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron confirmed to FBI investigators that Shelby verbally divulged the information to him during a June 19, 2002, interview, minutes after Shelby’s committee had been given the information in a classified briefing, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the case.
By any reasonable definition, this is a real scandal. Shelby was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee for over five years. He, of all people, knows all about legal restrictions on passing classified information over to the media. There’s no excuse for this kind of recklessness. Hell, it didn’t even meet Fox’s standards.
Cameron did not air the material. Moments after Shelby spoke with Cameron, he met with CNN reporter Dana Bash, and about half an hour after that, CNN broadcast the material, the sources said. CNN cited “two congressional sources” in its report.
So, where’s the outrage?
Berger took some photocopies accidentally, apologized, and was exonerated. Nevertheless, the media eviscerated him, permanently tarnishing his career, while the Republicans went apoplectic. Tom DeLay said Sandy Berger’s incident at the National Archives could be a “national security crisis” and compared the matter to Nixon’s Watergate break-in. Dennis Hastert claimed Berger was trying to intentionally deceive the 9/11 Commission, which clearly wasn’t the case.
And yet Shelby is the subject of an ongoing Justice Department criminal investigation and appears to have been caught dead to rights, and it’s widely ignored.
To be sure, there really isn’t any doubt about responsibility here.
A two-year investigation into how the news media obtained classified intercepted messages has found that Senator Richard C. Shelby, the Alabama Republican and former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was almost certainly a source, a government official familiar with the inquiry said Thursday.
And let’s not forget, the investigation, which has also been referred to the Senate Ethics Committee, is still ongoing.
While some press reports indicated that Justice’s criminal investigation was considered over, the law enforcement official stressed that the department still considers the case open. This sets up the possibility of concurrent criminal and ethics investigations by Justice and the Senate.
“It’s not closed — it remains open. The referral was made, but the case remains open,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Sounds like the kind of thing the media would jump on, right? Wrong. Berger created a firestorm, Shelby can’t light a match.
Consider CNN, which is supposed to be the reasonable network. Starting with the July 19th edition of Aaron Brown’s NewsNight, the network committed almost three dozen segments to the Berger “scandal” in just one week, including three separate episodes of Crossfire.
In contrast, CNN hasn’t committed any real segments to the Shelby story — that’s right, not even one — while the network mentioned the investigation in passing on Saturday.
And when I say “in passing,” I mean that quite literally. On “CNN Live Saturday,” after a commercial break, anchor Carol Lin said it was time for a “quick look at who’s happening in the news.” Eventually, CNN reported this:
A federal investigation into Republican Senator Richard Shelby, a Senate Ethics Committee is trying to determine whether he leaked classified information linked to 9/11 and al Qaeda. A separate investigation by the FBI is also underway.
That’s it. Berger’s photocopies generated a week of breathless excitement; Shelby’s obvious leak of classified information to the media got 30 words on a Saturday.
The next time someone whines about the “liberal” media, remind them of this.