By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
One of the more sordid moments in recent congressional history came during December's lame-duck session. Democratic majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill rammed through a controversial repeal of the 1993 statute (wrongly described as "don't ask, don't tell") that prohibited avowed homosexuals from serving in the armed forces.
The Army private accused of leaking a massive database of confidential U.S. diplomatic communications to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks is being moved from solitary confinement in a maximum-security cell at the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps Base to a new medium-security detention facility at the Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas.
U.S. combat forces have voiced strong reservations about the effects on readiness of allowing open gays in the ranks, the Pentagon said Tuesday in a report that is likely to influence a Senate vote on whether to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
President Obama and his friends in the media want the public to think Americans serving in uniform are just fine and dandy with homosexual conduct in the military. This view is being spread through a series of selective leaks from the Pentagon's Comprehensive Review Working Group, which is putting the finishing touches on a report regarding the future of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
It prompted one reviewer - a "former news anchor" whom Mr. Johnson allowed to see his draft over the July Fourth weekend - to tell the IG he was "struck by how many members of the United States Armed Services thought this was just fine."
"We have assessed that it is in Private [First Class Bradley] Manning's best interests to move him at this juncture in the case," said Jeh C. Johnson, the general counsel for the Defense Department, at a hastily arranged news conference late Tuesday.
