In fact, leaks are becoming standard fare by key players in the Obama administration. Someone, most likely on the military/intel side of the president’s national security bureaucracy, leaked Afghanistan Commanding General Stanley McChrystal’s report to Bob Woodward. Recently, other political players infuriated U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry by leaking his eleventh-hour contrarian view on a U.S. force surge to the press.But it’s quite hard to maintain the kind of Obama-esque upbeat tone of transparency and forthrightness and punish staff for leaking when the president himself is standing by and doing nothing as his closest advisors undermine one of their own.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg puts the finger on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that these leaks came at least indirectly from Rahm Emanuel,” she reported. “What is the cause of the friction? It's very hard to say. Was it Rahm not wanting to have another power center? Was it their personalities? Was it Rahm seeing the GITMO stuff as a distraction from the president's agenda?"
If the leaks were, in fact, made with President Obama’s encouragement, they could have come from any number of others deep inside the team – including David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, or Denis McDonough. It almost doesn’t matter who among these insiders might have done the leaking. None of them would have engaged in such an effort to dislodge Greg Craig unless the president had lost faith in his counsel.
But that begs the question: Why didn’t the president himself have a direct discussion with his counsel? Why didn’t Rahm Emanuel, as the president’s Cromwell, put it straight to the GITMO-burdened White House lawyer? Obama might have been uncomfortable with dislodging a friend and someone who had been so valuable and close during the campaign. As for Emanuel, it may be that he excels in and enjoys political intrigue more than being up front.
...what we just saw in Greg Craig’s firing was not “change we can believe in.” It was a sign that the dark side has taken hold at the White House.