From the Heritage Foundation, I'm Tim Desher, and this is Heritage Explains.

I look at it as it's both damning for the usage of leaked information, if it's classified or, you know, as part of a law enforcement sense of of investigation to be leaked in many ways for political purposes.

One, but two, probably the more important thing is from either the intelligence community or law enforcement apparatus is what that could do to our sources and methods of how we collected that information.

It could inhibit the future of an investigation entirely.

It could damage an allied relationship, depending on if that information it came from an

overseas source from our allies, which can be highly damning to relationships.

And what's really frustrating at times too is a lot of the times these leaks are done in

such a way that it's cherry picking information.

So you'll see members of Congress run out there and speculate.

Even like right now, like I said, I don't have all the details of this specific case, but

to a large extent it's highly speculative until we really probably see,

you know, the inspector general's review.

That's Dustin Carmack.

He's a research fellow in the Center for Tech Policy here at the Heritage Foundation.

He sat down with me to discuss his recent article that asks a crucial question,

should law enforcement be able to investigate leaks of classified information?

Hmm. Good question. But before we answer, let's set the stage.

Leaks happen all the time.

And the sensitivity of information leaked runs the spectrum.

From phone calls to emails and text messages to park benches, even parking garages in the 70s,

as portrayed in this Warner Entertainment Gem.

It was a Halterman operation.

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