yeah, that s right. he did not address the substance of the complaint or of the story. and that s just to be expected i guess from this president. it s hugely confirmation judging from the kinds of stories that you and your colleagues let me ask you one more question. i read your stories when i worked in the government. i sometimes feared your stories. have you ever seen an example where someone seeks out through the i.g. protections and through whistleblower protections which, as you said, are all set in law. a concern about a president s conduct. i have not. and i ve spoken to whistleblower attorneys, lawyers, who represent these whistleblowers. and they really can t think of such a case. this is fairly unprecedented. in fact, the whistleblower protection law itself for intelligence community officials doesn t really contemplate this sort of scenario. and that s actually part of the
we know the dni s whistleblower complaint? right. look, i think that s wrong. to nick s point, nobody expects donald trump, nobody ever has. but the law still replies and the law replies in the case of a president, and the president could make certain constitutional claims even if it weren t he who were under suspicion. the point is people rightly see this through the prism of what about a good honest president of the future. we want to apply the law there. but the law does apply there. that s what the whistleblower act says, whether it s the president or not. it gives it to the political process of the intelligence chief of the judiciary committee. and they can then deal with it, and it s not hermediccaly sealed. it might turn out not, you know, to fizzle. and there is a way for the executive to make the claims in court. but right now they are just saying these vague things to keep the law from operating.
it came to me. i m serious. in terms of what that word means in everyday language. right. to get back to whether this is whistle blowing and how we judge that. the whistle-blower protection law that was just passed does not cover national security federal employees as far as i m pa wear. executive director. but the executive directive is viewed by some as toothless. it doesn t affirm a new right as far as i know. just to so the public right to know is probably most important in the national security realm. on the other hand, the sensitivity of secrets is most sensitive in the national security realm. right. so what i would like to see happen with the bradley manning case is some playing out of that. unfortunately, all we ve had so far is a conversation about the treatment, about the kind of pre-trial, understandably so, but at some point i think the public deserves to know what was the harm done by the release of all of this. right. versus what did we gain