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Sir Humphrey Appleby: The question in a nutshell is ‘What is the difference between a breech of the Official Secrets Act on the one hand and an unattributable off the record briefing by a senior official?. The former a breech, is a criminal offense, the latter, a briefing, is essential to keep the wheels turning. Now is there a real objective difference or is it a matter of convenience and interpretation? and is it a breach of the Act , if there is an unofficial bib attributable briefing by an official who has been unofficially authorized by the Prime Minister?

PM James Hacker: If it’s authorized by the Prime Minister then no.

Bernard Wooley That’s what I said

PM James Hacker: Surely it’s ub to me wheatear it’s in the national interest for something to be disclosed or not. The point is it’s not up to officials and last week’s leak must have come from an official.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: But what if the official was officially authorized? Or even unofficially authorized? What if the Prime Minister officially disapproves of a breach of the act but unofficially approves? Now that would mean that a leak would be unofficially official, but officially unofficial.

Apparently the Pentagon is having an issue finding how how the alleged leaker of info on Ukraine that contradicts the narrative of this administration.

Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987

None of the rest of us could explain how an enlistee in the Air National Guard got his hands on highly classified military and diplomatic intelligence leaked over the past few months. Now it turns out that the Pentagon doesn’t have a good answer for that question, either. 

Back in the days when I worked for Raytheon, had secret clearance and had to sign a document saying there were several things that, if I did them, carried the death penalty, you didn’t get access to stuff unless you actually needed them for your job. Ed Morrissey continues to ask the relevant question:

Jack Teixeira served in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, based on Cape Cod. What would the MANG “need to know” about Mossad communications, Russian and Ukrainian military operations, and diplomat communications? The former chief of Massachusetts Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, doesn’t have an explanation for it either:

At least one former CIA officer has an explaination:

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, who did presidential daily briefings during the George H.W. Bush administration, told “Judging Freedom” host Andrew Napolitano that he thinks the latest leak of Ukraine War documents is an inside job.

About the source, he said: “I’d put it above the CIA. This is elements connected to the Director of National Intelligence… There’s no way that some National Guardsman doing [temporary duty] at Fort Bragg would have access to that.”

“The information was leaked for [a purpose], to prepare the U.S. public for the crash landing that’s going to take place with respect to U.S. foreign policy,” he said.

“The documents are real. I’m not saying the documents are fabrications, they are not. But this cover story that’s been manufactured to explain how these documents came to be produced, it just falls apart… This thing is too tidy a package, this has been wrapped up nice and neatly, this is like an episode of ‘Law And Order.'”

This sounds a lot more credible then the last explanation that an Ex intelligence man gave for a huge mistake this week.

Glenn Greenwald notes that there is a big difference between how this leak and this whistleblower is being treated by the press than others;

On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post‘s long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State laundered in the American corporate press.

But when it comes to unauthorized leaks — which result in the disclosure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws — that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now — in a new and genuinely shocking escalation — it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI’s work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.

All this via Insty and Town hall notes that some of the media narratives are already failing by the wayside.

But it’s the Babylon Bee that really nails it:

Military police have arrested Jack Teixeira for allegedly leaking classified documents that contained information on the war in Ukraine. Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman, is currently kicking himself for not just leaving documents strewn around an unlocked garage as the President did.

“Ugh! I’m so stupid! Why didn’t I just print them out and leave them in a garage, or a vacation home, or the trunk of a Corvette?” said the distraught Teixeira while being hauled away. “What on earth was I thinking?”

Mr. Johnson might be right about this being deliberate, but if that’s the case the government has one big advantage in selling their narrative. I’m not aware of anyone who would have trouble believing this administration and woke military was incompetent.