The War on Leakers: National Security and American Democracy, from Eugene V. Debs to Edward Snowden

Four days before Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, someone leaked American contingency war plans to the Chicago Tribune. The small splash the story made was overwhelmed by the shock waves caused by the Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet anchored in Hawaii—but the ripples never subsided, growing quietly but steadily across the Cold War, Vietnam, the fall of Communism, and into the present.

Ripped from today's headlines, Lloyd C. Gardner's latest book takes a deep dive into the previously une...