By “Senator Bob” Smith | May 15, 2011 http://www.aim.org/aim-column/intelligence-leaks-not-very-intelligent/

What appears to be happening now is the shameful exploitation of the incident by extracting the maximum public relations value from its success.
The tracking down and recent killing of Osama bin Laden were major accomplishments of the U.S. Intelligence Community, the elite Navy SEAL team, which took out this terrorist murderer, and those in the Obama administration who authorized the successful raid. Ten years, and two Presidents later, justice was done. Whether seeking revenge is right or wrong, it sure felt good to see bin Laden go down. Payback is a “son of a gun” as the expression goes!
The persistence of those in our Intelligence Community and all of our special operations personnel are a real source of pride. I remember personally witnessing the murders in front of the CIA Headquarters in 1993. I watched in horror while trapped in traffic, waiting for a light to change, while terrorist Mir Aimal Kasi murdered two innocent people in their cars. It took several years, but again another terrorist was apprehended in Pakistan and later tried and executed for his crime. It defines who we are as Americans that we would never give up until these terrorists met justice at our hands. But as Paul Harvey used to say, “now for the rest of the story.”

snip:

There is one even more troubling aspect to this entire operation.

Why are the administration and the media so intent upon providing so much detail on the intelligence gathered during the raid? Sources and methods may easily be compromised by leaking so much detailed information. Tracking down more al Qaeda terrorists could be hindered. We hear news stories about computers, hard drives, bin Laden’s personal handwritten diaries, and even the fact that we have names of certain operatives and specific terrorist action plans in America and around the world.

Clearly, this information is coming from the administration officials and not from the Intelligence Community.

Elizabeth Flock, in a Washington Post article on May 2nd, 2011, thought it would be nice to let the world and our enemies know that the SEAL team was stationed at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. What is she going to do next? List their names and addresses? Maybe the bars or restaurants they frequent during off hours? Ms. Flock could not resist taking a cheap shot at these heroes by saying that “they often engage in operations that are outside the boundaries of international law.”

True or not true, it is something that she could not know for sure, so why say it? Just plain dumb or something more sinister?

On May 12th in remarks at a Town Hall meeting at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Secretary of Defense Gates indicated that he was very concerned about the safety of the SEALs and their families as a result of what intelligence officials have called an “unprecedented breach of confidentiality.”
Gates told a largely Marine audience that “Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the situation room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.”

Gone are the days of World War II, when correspondents were not only asked to hold up stories that could compromise the success of a mission, they held up the information willingly.