President Obama promised to enhance whistle-blower laws, but is actually using the Espionage Act to prosecute them

It's the Chicago way...

Via The NYT:

Jake Tapper, the White House correspondent for ABC News, pointed out that the administration had lauded brave reporting in distant lands more than once and then asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?” 

He then suggested that the administration seemed to believe that “the truth should come out abroad; it shouldn’t come out here.” 

Fair point. The Obama administration, which promised during its transition to power that it would enhance “whistle-blower laws to protect federal workers,” has been more prone than any administration in history in trying to silence and prosecute federal workers. 

The Espionage Act, enacted back in 1917 to punish those who gave aid to our enemies, was used three times in all the prior administrations to bring cases against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media. It has been used six times since the current president took office.

Obama administration plans to let Chinese steal more of our nuclear secrets?

The last nuclear scientist exchange we did with the Chinese ended in an espionage disaster. For some unknown reason, the Obama administration wants to give it another try.

(Washington Times) — Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel B. Poneman is working on a major Obama administration initiative that would renew scientist exchanges between U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories and Chinese nuclear facilities.

The idea is aimed at promoting openness and transparency by China’s military about its secret, large-scale buildup of nuclear weapons, according to U.S. officials.

Critics say the plan is similar to an exchange program in the 1990s that sent U.S. nuclear scientists to China and produced one of the worst cases of nuclear espionage. Secrets about every deployed warhead in the U.S. arsenal were compromised, including the W-88 small nuclear warhead deployed on submarine-launched missiles.

“We’ve seen this movie before, and it has a bad ending,” one official said. Keep on reading...