Outing CIA Sources Is Immoral
The New York Times reported yesterday that Ahmed Karzai, a suspected drug trafficker and the brother of Afghan president Hamid Karzai, has received regular payments from the CIA for the last eight years. To see this on the front page of the New York Times is disappointing and disturbing.
It is certainly not news that the CIA would pay people who have access to individuals of interest, be that government leaders, drug traffickers or terrorists. That is exactly what they are supposed to do and hopefully they are doing it aggressively every day. Every few years some news story appears identifying an alleged CIA source with nefarious connections, as if the CIA is doing something wrong by recruiting such an individual. This is ridiculous.
What is much worse is that a legitimate news organization would publish the name of someone they believe to be a CIA informant. This puts at risk the life of the informant and potentially others, including CIA officers. It usually also puts an end to any useful information that individual could provide. Perhaps worst of all, it sends a message to anyone considering helping our intelligence services that we cannot be trusted to protect the identity of our sources, making the already difficult job of human intelligence collection even more difficult.
Publishing items like this makes all Americans less safe, and provides very little in terms of actual news.
