in the government hierarchy, there is no penalty for releasing classified info - unless you are Scooter Libby and lie about it to the FBI. When I was a junior officer assigned to the Army's current intel shop, I would often roll my eyes when reading Joe Alsop's column in the Washington Post where I would see half of a SECRET NOFORN cable that I had read yesterday! Clearly, the Administration was leaking classified - we used to jokingly ask who Alsop had lunch with. I would also often see - several days (or weeks) later - in the press stuff that I had seen in classified form. Note that the original messages were still classified but the information had moved into the open source literature.

Later in my career, I saw classification from the other side - that is plans that were classified TS but once executed should have been UNCLAS but somebody forgot to declassify - in other cases they were declassified. So, one issue here is proper classification or its lack. Another is the appropriate response to Adminsitration leaking of only part of the story - is this disinformation? A third, is declassification - what and when? Our system has problems with all of these. IMHO many of those problems could be addressed simply by using some "common sense" and people doing the jobs they are paid to do. Unfortunately "common sense" is uncommon; people don't always do their jobs; and other people want to play the system for their own political ends.

Cheers

JohnT