Is the Espionage Act Outdated?
Weekends on All Things Considered host Jacki Lyden speaks with Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution about the Espionage Act. This Word War I-era legislation has been used more frequently in recent times to prosecute government employees who leak information to the press, but the limits set by the act are poorly defined for our modern age.
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JACKI LYDEN, HOST:
This week, members of the press and the public are up in arms over what they see as a possible violation of First Amendment rights. The Department of Justice investigated phone and email records of Fox News reporter James Rosen, who published information leaked by a government employee. The Justice Department is pursuing the leak under the Espionage Act, a law that dates back to World War I and was used to stop national defense secrets getting into enemy hands.
But more recently, the government has used the Espionage Act to pursue whistle-blowers and federal employees who leak classified information to the press. And all this buzz made us wonder, what exactly is this old law?
To help fill us in, we have Benjamin Wittes with us. He's a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. Benjamin Wittes, welcome to the program.
BENJAMIN WITTES: Thanks for having me.
LYDEN: What was the original intent of the Espionage Act?
WITTES: Well, the Espionage Act is a World War I era statute that prevents people from giving national defense information to foreign governments, but also to people domestically who are not authorized to have it. It not only forbids the original transmission by the authorized person to the unauthorized person, but that it also purports to forbid secondary transmissions by unauthorized people to each other.
So to give you an example of that, if somebody leaks information to NPR and NPR then turns around and publishes that information or broadcasts it on the radio, NPR itself may be in violation of it.
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Is the Espionage Act Outdated?