Last year, we had the blockbuster case of  Senate Intelligence Committee security director James Wolfe and New York Times reporter Ali Watkins.

Watkins, far younger than Wolfe, who was married, slept with him with the knowledge of her bosses at BuzzFeed, Politico, the Huffington Post and the New York Times. 

It was a classic honeypot operation of the sort you expect from the Russians, not the media.

And now here’s another one.

 A Defense Intelligence Agency analyst has been arrested for allegedly leaking classified materials to two journalists, including one he was having a romantic relationship with.   

While the Justice Department did not name the journalists, they have been identified as CNBC’s national security reporter Amanda Macias and NBC’s national security reporter Courtney Kube.

According to court documents, Frese and Macias lived at the same address in Alexandria, Virginia, from August 2017 through August 2018.

So, partly, this is a security failure.

If your analyst is living with a national security reporter, it’s time to get a new analyst. 

As a result of this, Russia and China may have learned what we know about their weapons programs. And may be able to trace back our sources.

But we now have two cases in two years of leaks by personnel to the people they were sleeping with. This is becoming a serious problem. Is it time to treat the media as a national security threat?