Supreme Court’s Leak Probe Is Self-Immolation: Stephen L. Carter

In “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” — John le Carré’s classic novel about the hunt for a traitor near the top of British Intelligence — the hero, George Smiley, tells a colleague that “the art” of being a mole “is to be one of a crowd.” The greater the number of suspects, the smaller the possibility of being caught. Smiley is hauled from retirement to conduct some quiet detective work precisely because the alternative is a massive investigation that would disrupt and perhaps destroy the very institution it’s designed to protect.

That’s the territory the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to enter. ...