Washington Post civil war: Columnist wants his own newspaper’s source prosecuted

Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen says the leaker who gave classified information to his own outlet should be prosecuted.

He held nothing back in a short X post addressing the WaPo exclusive, which detailed reporting warnings given to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth by “several U.S. military leaders” regarding the Iran war.

Look:

“Whoever leaked this is a traitor and ought to be prosecuted,” he wrote.

According to the article, the information came from the August 14 Secretary of Defense Orders Book, which is classified, and the story’s reporters cited sources familiar with the assessment. These sources spoke anonymously because they were effectively leaking classified information to the American media.

Thiessen’s post received some pushback from the outlet’s foreign policy columnist Josh Rogin, who cited a WaPo Communications statement about the story’s publication. But as the columnist pointed out in a follow-up, he only said the leaker should be punished, not The Post for publishing the information.

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“I said whoever LEAKED it, Josh. You do get that a government official leaking classified information to the press is committing a crime, right?” Thiessen asked.

Rogin wasn’t having it, though, insisting that leaking classified information isn’t a big deal if it’s deemed “newsworthy.”

“You do get that reporters publish classified information in certain cases where it is determined by their editors that publishing the information is newsworthy and in the public interest and after considering any national security implications and they do that usually without their colleagues calling publicly for their sources to be arrested, right?” he asked.

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Sierra Marlee

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