THE BUSH administration leaks like a sieve, and the President has not done enough to stop it. The latest result: We might have lost access to valuable inside information on al-Qaida.

The New York Sun and The Washington Post reported yesterday that someone inside the federal government, probably in the White House or the intelligence community, leaked last month's Osama bin Laden video three days before it was supposed to be released. The leak let al-Qaida know that its Internet network had been compromised. The terror group shut down its network, blacking out an important source of internal al-Qaida communications.

The video was first obtained by a group called SITE, the Search for International Terrorist Entities. SITE translated the video and gave the White House access to where the video was housed on its computers -- with an agreement that the video remain secret so al-Qaida would not know its internal communications were being monitored. Within minutes the video was being downloaded from numerous government computers. Within three hours the video had made it to the network news.

Al-Qaida immediately shut down its internal communications network.

The most famous leak from the Bush administration was Richard Armitage's disclosure to columnist Bob Novak of Valerie Plame's name. It is famous because the Democrats used it to wrongly accuse the White House of outing a CIA operative for political gain. That leak was benign. Not only was Plame never endangered, but the leak was not politically motivated.

Meanwhile, actually secret information vital to the conduct of the War on Terror has been gushing out. From the CIA's secret detention facilities in Europe to the last bin Laden video, there have been numerous leaks that might have compromised our ability to conduct this war.

And yet not only do the Democrats say nothing, but the Bush administration doesn't plug the leaks.

The attitude in Washington toward intelligence leaks has become too cavalier. The President needs to find those responsible for this last leak and apply the legally appropriate punishment. An example must be made to reduce these leaks. They are counterproductive at least, and at some point, if they have not already, they might end up costing American lives.