Reply #15: I don't see how the source of the material matters. [View All]

Or how signing a secrecy oath matters. If the material in question was illegally classified to begin with the Congress member revealing it has that fact available as a legal defense.

I also am not 100% certain that Congressional briefings contained any reference to illegal activities. However it's certainly looking more and more as if they did. For example, Rockefeller has acknowledged he was briefed on waterboarding. All that would have been required of him at that point would have been to make the personal self-evident determination that waterboarding violated the law. I would strongly argue that it's obvious that on its face that it does. At that point he could then have publicly revealed the waterboarding and publicly opposed it. In the very unlikely event that he were then prosecuted by the Bush administration he would have had the criminal nature of waterboarding and EO 12356 1.6(a) to use as a legal defense.