While I was out on sick leave, there was a blogosphere flurry over the Chicago Tribune's story reporting on a planned US spring offensive into Pakistan to clean out Al Qaeda. Dan Drezner tried to figure out whether the leak was intentional or unintentional or an "an unintentional intentional leak," an exercise that sent him reaching for an aspirin. Citizen Smash says the leak was either "either a disinformation campaign, or treason." Personally, this whole thing sounds like a Rumsfeld operation. Anyway, as to the question of whether the Tribune should have reported this story, let me offer a historical footnote. As the invaluable Wikipedia relates, the Tribune in 1942 betrayed national security by disclosing that US Navy experts had broken the Japanese naval code:
Public notice had actually been served that Japanese cryptography was inadequate by the Chicago Tribune, which published a series of stories just after Midway in 1942 directly claiming -- correctly, of course -- that the victory was due in large part to US breaks into Japanese crypto systems (in this case, the JN-25 cypher, though which system(s) had been broken was not mentioned). Fortunately, neither the Japanese nor anyone who might have told them, seem to have noticed either the Tribune or stories based on the Tribune account published in other US papers.I doubt whether Al Qaeda will be quite so dense. Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing, but it's worth remembering that the Chicago Tribune has a history of abusing the privilege.
