Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. Mr. President.

The press, unfortunately, has a long and sordid history of publishing sensitive information from inside the government that damages our national security. During the Vietnam war, the New York Times published the Pentagon Papers in an effort to demoralize the American people and turn them against the war effort.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the press routinely revealed details about America's efforts to hunt down terrorists, details that helped our enemies cover their tracks and evade justice.

These leaks were reckless and harmful to our national security. Yet the PRESS Act would immunize journalists and leakers alike from scrutiny and consequences for their actions. This bill would prohibit the government from compelling any individual who calls himself a journalist from disclosing the source or substance of such damaging leaks.

This effectively would grant journalists special legal privileges to disclose sensitive information that no other citizen enjoys. It would treat the press as a special caste of crusaders for truth who are somehow set apart from their fellow citizens.

But that is not how the law historically has treated journalists. Our laws have always made clear that journalists can be held criminally liable for what they publish. In the Pentagon Papers case itself, a kind of holy grail for the liberal media, Justice White wrote the press is on ``full notice of the position of the United States and must face the consequences if they publish'' material damaging to our national security.

So while prior restraints were ruled out, consequences for violating the laws of our country remained necessary, and they remain necessary today as well because, moreover, if recent history has taught us anything, it is that too many journalists these days are little more than leftwing activists who are, at best, ambivalent about America and who are cavalier about our security and about the truth.

For instance, as the publisher of the New York Times during the Pentagon Papers case, Arthur ``Punch'' Sulzberger, wrote:

I am not sure that what we offer the Vietnamese peasant or what their own leaders offer them is any better than what the communists offer.

Think about that for a minute. The publisher of the New York Times, whose family still controls it today, couldn't see a difference between us--the United States--between Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson and Ho Chi Minh, a murderous, communist butcher. This is the kind of person we would be giving special legal privileges to that no other citizen enjoys.

Supporters of this bill insist that it is necessary to grant journalists this special kind of immunity in order to ``preserve the free flow of information to the public.'' But, of course, there are many legal avenues that whistleblowers can use to air their concerns about potential government misconduct.

In the executive branch, they can go to their Agency's inspector general. They can also go to the Office of Special Counsel, and, of course, they can go to the proper oversight committee here in Congress. Put differently, there is no shortage of legitimate and legal avenues for whistleblowers to unveil potential government misconduct. But this bill would allow any disgruntled bureaucrat, totally unaccountable to democratic processes, to circumvent these legitimate channels and go straight to the press, relying on the highly questionable judgment and unaccountable judgment of these bureaucrats and reporters alone to determine whether America's most sensitive secrets should be revealed.

And, finally, quite aside from all these grave concerns, this bill hasn't been through the Senate's usual process for debating and refining legislation. And, as I have explained, it shows. It hasn't been through regular order. There have been no hearings, no markups, or even a previous effort to pass the bill on the floor, to my knowledge.

This bill needs to be thoroughly vetted before we take such a drastic step to ensure that we don't open a floodgate of damaging leaks to our national security.

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