Charles Krauthammer asserts that journalists and media outlets like the New York Times might be considered accomplices when it comes to disseminating classified information and collaborating with criminals like the WikiLeakers.
Transcript
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Here's the premise: The president's spokesman yesterday said that what WikiLeaks had done is a crime. Now, he's not a Right-winger. That's what a liberal administration is saying - a crime is committed by WikiLeaks.
Presumably the Justice Department is going to be looking to prosecute the criminals involved.
What I would say is if you find people who are American or otherwise who are collaborating with the criminal disseminating this information, illegal under the Espionage Act of 1917, that we ought to look into prosecuting them.
Now I know that there are interpretations of that law over the years by the Supreme Court which makes it extremely hard to apply that to a journalist or a news organization, as in the Pentagon Papers. So I would say we ought to look into this very carefully. And if the courts throw it out, they throw it out.
But what I would say is there are hundreds of lawyers in the Justice Department who ought to get off their duffs and look to see whether we can write a narrow law that says anyone who collaborates with the kind of crime WikiLeaks is involved in, in violation of the Espionage Act, journalist or not, is subject to prosecution as an accessory to the crime.
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BILL O'REILLY: So morally, did the New York Times do anything wrong?
KRAUTHAMMER: I think so. If I were offered this material, if I got a call from this Assange guy in Stockholm or wherever else he's hiding, I would say get lost. I would turn him in if I could.
Video.
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