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Usually you kind of give the President a pass on leaking confidential stuff.

The White House tapes, recording Nixon's nefarious doings from Watergate to the bombing of Vietnam, made frightening reading once made public on the orders of Congress.

The president has a right to discuss his national security policies with the public. But that should be done in the light of day without endangering our sources or methods. The public has no need to know details about intelligence assets or special operations units. Such disclosures endanger those who protect us.

Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything.

I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.

Ever since Woodward and Bernstein, there's sort of been an epidemic of confidential sources in Washington, in particular where people will actually - when you call them up on the phone, they'll say, 'This is off the record,' or, 'This is on background,' or they don't even wait for you to say anything.

We will never know if any other president approached Nixon in paranoia, profanity or potential criminality, since only his conversations were captured, subpoenaed and ultimately released on the front pages of newspapers.

The White House tapes, the recordings that Nixon made of his conversations in office, have long been recognized as a marvel of verbal incontinence.

I know a lot of reporters certainly will go to jail to defend confidential sources. Some have even gone to jail for an issue like this. But I can't say that's the norm.

The Obama administration appears to regard intelligence leaks and briefings more or less like briefings by the Democratic National Committee or White House flack Jay Carney. You use any information at hand, classified or not, and you spin it any way you like, fairly or not.