ABC 
 
 Obama campaign senior adviser David Axelrod insisted he is confident that newly launched investigations will show that recent leaks on classified national security information did not come from the White House. 
 
 "I think the authors of all of this work have said that the White House was not the source of this information," Axelrod told me this morning on "This Week." "I can't say that there weren't leaks. There were obvious leaks, but they weren't from the White House." 
 
 Axelrod said Obama takes all "life or death decisions" on national security seriously, and that the White House would not leak information that may jeopardize classified operations. 
 
 "He understands that when he commits people to missions that their lives are at stake, and the safety of Americans are at stake," Axelrod said. "And the last thing that he would countenance or anybody around him would countenance are leaks that would jeopardize the security of Americans on these secret missions, and the success of those missions." 
 
 Both Republicans and Democrats have accused the White House of releasing details of various secret operations, including the effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, for political purposes in order to bolster President Obama's national security credentials before the election. 
 
 President Obama disputed that charge Friday at a White House press conference, saying, "The notion that my White House would purposefully release classified national security information is offensive. It's wrong." 
 
 Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that two federal prosecutors would lead investigations into the leaks to news outlets, including The New York Times. 
 
 When I asked if he was confident the investigations would not show White House involvement, Axelrod said "Yes," citing the administration's history of cracking down on leaks. 
 
 "We have come under attack because we have been tougher on leaks than any administration in recent history And we have been criticized for that," Axelrod said. "We want to make sure that the people we assign to these very difficult tasks are safe, or as safe as they can be." ||||| Two stories published by the New York Times, which exposed the extent of U.S. involvement in cyber attacks against Iran and the White House’s secret 'Kill List,' have sparked scrutiny over the last week amid allegations that administration officials had leaked classified information for political gain.The debate continued Sunday as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) reiterated calls for a special prosecutor to take charge of leak investigations and as a reporter who wrote one of the stories said he doubted that any politically motivated leaks were involved.David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, appeared on CNN ’s “Reliable Sources” to defend his reporting on U.S. involvement in deploying the Stuxnet computer virus against Iran.Sanger said that during 18 months of reporting for his book “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,” he obtained information from the ground up. He said he had serious doubts as to whether there were any political motivations behind the leaks.“Did I talk to a lot of people in the administration? Of course,” he said, as would be expected when writing a book about national security.Sanger contended that how Obama conducts himself in the theater of international military action is key for the public to know, and is a necessary story for the media to report on, regardless of the secrecy associated with national security issues.“Can we debate them out in the open? Of course,” he said.McCain dismissed Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder ’s appointment of two federal prosecutors to oversee the investigation.“Mr. Holder’s credibility with Congress, there is none. We continue to have this problem with him withholding information on Fast and Furious, which resulted in the killing of a border patrol agent in Arizona. He is close to being held in contempt,” McCain said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House committee investigating the Fast and Furious operation – an effort to track gun purchases by Mexican drug cartels that lost track of many of the weapons – has proposed holding Holder in contempt. Democrats have dismissed the effort as political grandstanding.“This information had to have come from the administration. It couldn’t have come from anywhere else,” McCain said, referring to details in Sanger’s book. “The president may not have done it himself, but he’s certainly responsible as commander in chief.”
– The public's right to know about the president and his policies outweigh secrecy and security issues, says David Sanger, the New York Times reporter behind one of two much-criticized articles on the White House's approach to national security, reports the LA Times. Sen. John McCain has repeatedly attacked the White House for leaking sensitive information to boost its profile, specifically via Sanger's story about the president's role in stepping up cyberattacks on Iran's nuclear program. But Sanger, who is coming out with a book about national security under President Obama, titled Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, says those issues are fair game and important for the press—but, of course, he doesn't reveal his sources. “Did I talk to a lot of people in the administration? Of course,” said Sanger, without naming names. “Can we debate" the issues "out in the open? Of course.” President Obama's senior campaign adviser, meanwhile, continued to defend the White House from leak accusations, telling ABC News that the administration would not compromise national security. “I can’t say that there weren’t leaks," said David Axelrod. "There were obvious leaks, but they weren’t from the White House."