PerspectiveA Wildly Irresponsible Cover-Blowing Article on a Whistleblower, Brought to You by the New York Times

“I had a feeling the whistleblower making headlines might be a CIA analyst because I recognized the writing style used in the complaint,” Aki Peritz, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst and coauthor of Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda, writes in War on the Rocks , noting that the director of the Harvard Writing Center argued his college writing instructor should take credit.

“I disagree,” Peritz write. “The specific use of placing the analytic bottom line up front, active sentence construction, punchy bullets, and subheads all indicated we probably took the same battery of writing courses a long time ago. As a former Agency analyst, I can tell you this writing style is drilled into our souls in the service of the United States.”

He adds:

But the New York Times did itself, free speech, and the country no favors by running an article entitled, “Whistleblower is a CIA Officer Who Was Detailed to the White House.” It basically outs a member of CIA in all but name as the whistleblower responsible for impeachment hearings that might bring down a president. They lifted the veil enough to indicate he (and not a she) was a Ukraine-focused analyst who has since returned to his office in suburban Virginia. There are now enough datapoints available to potentially hundreds of people — members of the White House, the National Security Council, other members of the intelligence community, his colleagues, his neighbors who knew his professional passions — that his name is almost certainly about to be brought into the light, whether he likes it or not. This is terrible for the intelligence community, the media, and the country.

But it is not terrible for the president of the United States. Remember, this is a man who mused that the U.S. government should “handle” employees who talked to the whistleblower “like in the old days.” Perhaps it’s just the standard bluff and bluster.

Now, the Grey Lady handed this career intelligence officer on a silver platter to anyone who might wish him ill.

Peritz is emphatic:

This whistleblower…followed the law. He did what his country asked him to do — to follow correct procedures on what appeared to be a grave national security violation. Isn’t that what Americans should want?”

I’m not trying to argue here whether the president should be impeached. It’s just this sort of cavalier treatment of a whistleblower’s identity by the New York Times is unacceptable no matter who occupies the White House or who it involves. This is especially true in the intelligence business.

Pertiz sounds the alarm:

The army of amateur Internet sleuths will soon be dropping all of his information online. This creepy manhunt is already occurring…. The whistleblower is already living under federal protection because he fears for his safety. I hope he told his whole extended family to lock down all their social media immediately, because the trolls are coming. Lord help him if he is an ethnic or religious minority. Lord help us all if someone eventually shows up at his door. It’s not hard to imagine there are other Cesar Sayocs out there.