Stratfor Leaked E-Mail Fingered Brennan For Witch Hunt Against Reporters

Breitbart's Kerry Picket has identified an e-mail included in a dump of global intelligence e-mails from the private intelligence service Stratfor that were released by Wikileaks a week after President Obama's re-election last year that identified Obama's then-counter terrorism adviser John Brennan as the person in the administration behind the witch hunt against journalist who reported unflattering information about the administration from leaked sources. The e-mail in question was first mentioned in a Twitter post by the Massachusetts ACLU on November 15, 2012 titled "war on whistle blowers."


Obama nominated Brennan as his choice to become CIA Director shortly after Gen. David Petraeus was forced out following disclosures the day after the election that he had an extramarital relationship with his biographer. Before joining the Obama administration, Brennan headed up the same private firm under contract with the State Department whose employees had been found to have illegally breached Obama's passport file to scrub it of damaging information. Brennan, a long-time CIA employee, also headed up the CIA post in Saudi Arabia that was responsible for issuing U.S. visas to 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers.

Only recently have we learned that the Justice Department had searched phone and e-mail records of the Associated Press and Fox News' Jim Rosen to learn the source of leaks. In a search warrant request, the Justice Department identified Rosen as “an aider, and abettor, and / or co-conspirator” in violating the Espionage Act, noting that the crime can be punished by ten years in prison. Although Rosen was never criminally charged, the implication of the government's statement in its search warrant filing was that a reporter could be charged with a federal crime for routine reporting.