Officials have long scolded the public that even minor disclosures of “sources and methods” could “risk lives” and must be prevented at all costs. Yet here comes the Times, helping “current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe” blab a long list of extraordinary details, down to the number of CIA-supported secret bases along the Russian border. ...

These rehashed Russiagate narratives are conveniently emerging just as Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan went on Meet the Press to warn again that Russia is “trying to interfere” in the 2024 election. (Russian meddling will eventually outstrip Saw X as America’s most exhaustively-mined sequel series.) “Experts” and “officials” told NBC that one scenario is a “‘hack and leak,’ such as the politically damaging theft of internal Democratic Party emails by Russian military intelligence operatives in 2016.”

In other words, we’re being warned about a possible leak of damaging true material we should patriotically ignore, like — taking one hypothetical — accusations that the CIA signed off on campaigns of assassinations and lethal operations in and around Russia dating back ten years.