A Most Unusual Security Breach

Via this article at TCS, here's a shocking story I haven't seen covered in any of my usual haunts:

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz said patriotism motivated him to join a spy ring, smuggle secret files from Camp Pendleton and give them to law enforcement officers for anti-terrorism work in Southern California.

He knew his group was violating national security laws. But he said bureaucratic walls erected by the military and civilian agencies were hampering intelligence sharing and coordination, making the nation more vulnerable to terrorists.

Maziarz, a member of the Marine Forces Reserve, had helped search for survivors in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“I decided to make a difference and act,” Maziarz testified during his court-martial in July at Camp Pendleton.

...

During his trial, Maziarz said he passed the classified files to at least four men. These alleged accomplices were military reserve officers, and two of them also worked with anti-terrorism units for police and sheriff's departments in Los Angeles County.

At the same time, how utterly horrifying that these bureaucratic roadblocks were apparently so absolute and our ability to address the threat of domestic terrorists so circumscribed that these men--including high-ranking officers--felt they had to break the law and risk their careers in order to protect the country.

One wonders whether their vigilantism yielded any prosecutions.

One also wonders whether this sort of prosecution would convince leftist goofballs who think we're living in a police state, maaan that this sort of lawbreaking in pursuit of terrorists is Officially Discouraged and actually lands officers in the brig. Probably not; most people who buy into those paranoid fantasies prefer to stay and wallow in them, and aren't willing to listen to reason and logic and figure a way out.

UPDATE: More good questions...Occasus, in the comments:

Anyone on the left going to run out and defend them as whistle-blowers?

Anyone, anyone??

Will their punishment for breaking the law regarding the care and handling of classified material exceed that punishment meted to Sandy Berger?

Hee hee hee. I understand one of them is advising the McCain campaign, and another is going to head up Giuliani's National Security Council.

There is, by the way, some weird stuff going on with this case; apparently Gunnery Sgt. Maziarz had a storage unit containing some rather exotic trophies from Iraq--swords, gold-plated Saddam souvenir guns, that sort of thing, so he may have an interest besides just patriotism here.

The other guys involved? I wonder. We'll see.

Maybe Sandy Berger should have tried that tactic: I was smuggling classified terrorist information out of the Library of Congress so I could deliver it to someone who would act on it! Now come on, Chloe, I need those schematics downloaded to my PDA so I can storm the terrorist hideout and save America!