Politics & Power Quote by Peter King

“Clear and present danger” isn’t just alarm-bell language; it’s a legal incantation with a pedigree. Peter King reaches for a phrase forged in wartime Supreme Court cases to launder a political argument through the authority of constitutional crisis. By invoking it against WikiLeaks, he’s not merely describing a threat. He’s pre-loading the conversation with the implication that extraordinary measures are justified and dissent should be treated less like speech than sabotage.

The intent is twofold. First, it narrows the moral frame: the story becomes “national security vs. reckless exposure,” not “state secrecy vs. public accountability.” Second, it deputizes the public into choosing sides quickly, before inconvenient nuance can arrive. “Presents” is doing work here too: it suggests an ongoing, active peril, not a past controversy, keeping the window open for surveillance, prosecution, or new restrictions.

Context matters. In the wake of the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs and U.S. diplomatic cables, Washington’s credibility was already strained by wars sold with selective information. WikiLeaks punctured that ecosystem, and lawmakers like King responded by shifting the focus from what the documents revealed to the act of revelation itself. The subtext is a warning to future leakers and publishers: transparency will be framed as treason, even when the leak exposes policy failure or misconduct.

It’s also a rhetorical hedge. By calling WikiLeaks a “danger,” King avoids engaging the thornier question of whether the public had a legitimate interest in what was disclosed. The phrase doesn’t argue; it forecloses.