This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 30th, 2018.

I'm Keelib Brown.

When the White House began threatening the security clearances of people who have publicly

criticized the president

the goal was likely not to punish them so much as send a message to potential

whistleblowers down the line. That from Cato Scholar Patrick Eddington, we spoke last week.

The President has many critics.

Some of those critics have taken to the airwaves to talk about the problems they have with the president. John Brennan has described

the president's performance in Helsinki as treasonous. And John Brennan of course is former head of the CIA.

And in response the White House has said, well maybe we need to remove or revoke these critics to the extent that they have top secret

or other security clearances.

We need to revoke those clearances as a response.

And they haven't really, really seemed to try to hide the fact that this is pure retribution

for public statements made by people who have been in the intelligence community.

So to the, so is, is there any case to be made for that being a reasonable thing?

Given the context, no. Now I find myself in this really bizarre position,

as I noted in the piece that I wrote for just

security on the 24th of July of 2018 earlier this week that I'm in the position

here of having to defend people who I really, really intensely dislike from a public policy standpoint and

you've already talked about one former CIA director John Brennan and for those who may not remember it was Mr Brennan who was the

chief public apologist for George W Bush's torture program he did so in the news

hour in 2005 and of course it was also Brennan who ordered the break-in of computers

...