Newt Gingrich said Friday that a former CIA official has told him that President Obama's administration has leaked more secrets than any other White House that official had seen.
“You have an Obama administration who’s dedicated to appeasing our enemies and dedicated to giving away our secrets,” Gingrich said in an interview with WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. “I’ve had a former very senior CIA person tell me this White House has leaked more secrets than any White House in his lifetime.”
A senior Obama campaign official said in response: “His definition of appeasement must be decimating al-Qaida’s leadership.”
Obama is known for his low tolerance of unofficial leaked information, and he has instructed his numerous directors of national intelligence to crack down on them. One senior administration official said earlier this year that the only time he witnessed the president raising his voice was in the summer of 2010, when Obama complained about leaks describing the CIA efforts to expand its footprint in Yemen.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper promptly sent a memo to the entire intelligence community in which he noted that “blabbing secrets to the media is not ‘in.’ So far as I’m concerned.” But he has found it frustrating to keep pace with the volume of information that has been disclosed.
After the successful Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the intelligence community saw a wave of leaks on operational details; Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, characterized it as a big “barf” of secrets. The situation prompted Clapper to send out another memo.
In the radio interview, Gingrich also repeated his criticism of Mitt Romney for airing what the former House speaker considers misleading attack ads in their battle for the Republican presidential nomination. Gingrich said he received an e-mail of an ad from Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign against Edward Kennedy featuring Romney asking the incumbent to stop the negative advertising against him. In the ad, Romney says, “How about, Ted, you talk about your plans and I’ll talk about mine?”
“I watched the ad and I just broke up laughing,” Gingrich said, adding that he still wants to hold a head-to-head debate with the former Massachusetts governor.
“I’ve debated [Rick] Santorum, [Jon] Huntsman, and Herman Cain,” he said. “All three of those debates were seen by people as intelligent, positive; all three got very good coverage. Once again, Mitt just doesn’t want to tell the truth.”
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