May 13, 2005 – A few weeks ago, we editorialized about the lack of development of a story that got considerable play in the media last August. It involved a Department of Defense employee, two AIPAC officials, a lunch and some documents about Iran that were reportedly classified information.
At the time we said that we hadn’t heard anything about the case since the breathless August revelations and nothing at all about the breach of security at the FBI, CIA, or State Department, who were the only agencies in a position to make this incident a public matter. This breach of trust seems to us much more important than the Iran document that was discussed at lunch.
The excellent editorial from the New York Sun on the opposite page goes over the developments in the case.  We can all only speculate about the obvious political implications of the timing of this material being released. It turns out that there has been a recent arrest in the case, and that makes us wrong when we said there was no new news about this, and we regret the error. But this doesn’t change our strong opinion that the important element of this investigation should be finding where the information came from. Because of the agencies involved, there was a breach of security entailed and any of those departments talking to the media about a matter of this sort needs to be held to account.
We are also waiting too, without any real expectation of a response, for CBS and the Washington Post, the media outlets who gave this story such prominence at the time, to explain their need to use their front page and prime time with something as undeveloped and flimsy as this case was at the time and in many respects still is.
This story is not even close to a major spy scandal. In fact, it is not even near in gravity to Sandy Berger’s document caper or John Deutch’s lap top misplacement. Both of those incidents involved very, very senior people and many more documents. Their carelessness or malevolence put thousands of classified documents at risk.
All of this would be harmless if not for the innuendo and undercurrent involved. Raising the specter of dual loyalty on the part of members of government who are Jewish was an undercurrent in CBS and Post coverage. Invoking Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith at a politically sensitive time, only several weeks before an election, and then dropping the story completely, leaves something to be desired in terms of responsible journalism.
It seems that harm was intended, and this is what should concern us going forward. Where did the information come from and why did those two major media outlets allow this flimsy story preoccupy them so much are questions that should be asked and answered.
-nrg