This week the deans of schools of journalism and communications at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, Berkeley and the University of Southern California wrote a brief article for The Washington Post on the question of whether to publish stories based on leaks of classified information.

Their conclusion: “When in doubt, publish.”

The deans considered the recent New York Times story revealing the details of a top-secret Treasury Department program targeting terrorist finances.

Their verdict: Publish.

They also considered the Times story revealing the top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) program that the Bush administration calls the “terrorist surveillance program” and its adversaries call “domestic spying.”

Their verdict: Publish.

They did not, unfortunately, discuss The Washington Post story revealing the top-secret program under which the CIA held high-value terrorist prisoners in Eastern Europe. But it seems likely that their verdict would have been: Publish.

Even though they reached the same decision each time, the deans wrote that on a few occasions, the choice to publish is a close call.

“The journalist’s dilemma, then, lies in choosing between the risk that would result from disclosure and the parallel risk of keeping the public in the dark — a quandary that has become all the more pointed since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,” they wrote.

“As deans charged with imparting the values of journalism to the next generation of reporters and editors, we favor disclosure when there are not strong reasons against it.”

Reading their article, it’s not entirely clear just how strong a reason would have to be to prevent publication of a story.

Oh, wait. There is one example.

“There are situations in which that chance should not be taken,” the deans wrote. “For instance, there was no justification for columnist Robert D. Novak to have unmasked Valerie Plame as a covert CIA officer.”

No one should be surprised by what might be called the Plame Exception. For three years now, journalism’s leading lights have argued that the Plame leak was somehow worse than leaks of mere anti-terrorist programs.

They appear to believe that the Plame disclosure did more damage than the others — even though Patrick Fitzgerald, the CIA leak prosecutor, has said that in the upcoming perjury trial of Lewis Libby, he, Fitzgerald, does not plan to offer “any proof of actual damages” done by the Plame leak.

Maybe there was some harm; we just don’t know. But there seems no doubt that the terrorist-financing, NSA surveillance and CIA prisons stories did substantial damage to American national security.

So which story do the journalism deans condemn? Of course.

Some top figures in the profession have even suggested that the basic tenets of journalism should have been set aside in Novak’s case.

“Never burn a source,” former Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser wrote in The New York Times in 2004. “It’s a cardinal rule of journalism.”

Well, unless Novak is involved. The conservative columnist’s article revealing the identity of Valerie Plame, Overholser wrote, “turned a time-honored use of confidentiality — protecting a whistleblower from government retribution — on its head, delivering government retribution to the whistleblower instead.”

But that wasn’t all, Overholser wrote: “Worse, [Novak] enabled his sources to illegally divulge intelligence information.”

Imagine that!!! Sources illegally divulged intelligence information!!! And a reporter “enabled” them!!!!!!

Well, somehow intelligence information — highly classified intelligence information — has made its way into the press quite regularly in recent months. And the leaders of the journalism profession have no problem with its being published.

Except for the Novak story.

Now, finally, Novak has written his own account of his role in the CIA leak matter. As he tells it, he did not reveal the names of any of his sources to prosecutor Fitzgerald. By the time Novak first met Fitzgerald face to face, in early 2004, Fitzgerald already knew the names of Novak’s sources.

But Novak does not tell all. He discusses the names of top White House adviser Karl Rove and former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, but not his main source — the one who originally told Novak about Valerie Plame’s identity.

“I have revealed Rove’s name because his attorney has divulged the substance of our conversation, though in a form different from my recollection,” Novak writes.

“I have revealed Harlow’s name because he has publicly disclosed his version of our conversation, which also differs from my recollection. My primary source has not come forward to identify himself.”

Now, one could argue that the dictum “never burn a source” is no longer necessary after a source has been thoroughly incinerated by an extraordinarily zealous prosecutor, as were all the sources in the CIA leak case. But that conflagration of sources is just what some of journalism’s top figures — among them, The New York Times editorial board — wanted to see in the Plame affair.

Now, they’re trying to argue that other leaks are different.

Do you believe them?

York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it