The Prowler at the Spectator has done some digging of his own into Mr. Scott Armstrong, the source for the information on Thompson during Watergate:

Scott Armstrong, former Democrat Watergate investigator, who many former colleagues on the Watergate Committee believe leaked inside information about the investigation to Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and then apparently parlayed those ties into a job as a Post reporter, wasn’t happy enough with his 15 minutes of fame back in the 1970s. Now that his former colleague on the committee, former Sen. Fred Thompson is garnering some attention, Armstrong is elbowing his way back into the news.

Armstrong accuses Thompson of leaking information to the White House. However:

For the most part, there isn’t a single witness that goes before a House of Senate committee who hasn’t told us beforehand what he or she is going to say,” says a current Judiciary Committee career staffer. “The Boston Globe and the Associated Press know this, but they treat the Watergate hearings like they were somehow different. Big surprise.”

Who was really leaking information to, like say, Bob Woodward? Did the author take notice that Armstrong was Woodward’s best man at his wedding? While Armstrong claimed to be trying to identify the leaks in the committee, news was being leaked to the Washington Post on a regular basis. According to one lawyer:

“There were a number of us who were trying to figure out who was leaking to Woodward, and we never were able to find out,” says a Washington, D.C. based lawyer, who back in the early 1970s served as a junior aide to one of the senators sitting on the committee. “Once everything was over and Armstrong went to work at the Post, it all made sense.”

Since Watergate, Mr. Armstrong has been keeping himself quite busy. In 1985, he founded the National Security Archive, which according to the Spectator, was a group that was operated through Fund for Peace, a leftist group which encouraged the leaking of:

national security information to the public. Armstrong, according to insiders at the Ford Foundation, was too extreme politically for the foundation, which at the time was the Fund for Peace’s key donor. Armstrong was pushed out.

As of late, he has been involved in a leftist group called ‘The Information Trust.’ According to the Spectator, the groups mission is ?enabling federal government leakers of classified information. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation officials:

It is believed to have played a critical role in the leaking of national security and intelligence data to the New York Times and Washington Post about the CIA’s secret prisons that housed al Qaeda terrorists overseas. The organization also is believed to have assisted in the leaking of information on the SWIFT financial monitoring system out of the Treasury Department. Department.

Now, if you’re starting to get a clearer idea of the type of person Mr. Jack Armstrong is, let me give you some information. Mr. Armstrong has a reputation that is not very kind. He has been known to involve himself in things like this. Let me give you what Thompson said about Armstrong in his book, “At that Point in Time”:

Armstrong, in my view, should never have been on the staff. Although very capable, he was a close friend, from their days at Yale, of Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, which was running exclusive Watergate sotries almost daily based on “informed sources” within the committee. Armstrong was Woodward’s best man when he married several months after the hearings. More than once I accused Armstrong of being Woodward’s source. After Rollings Stone magazine published an article that characterized almost every member of the staff- except Armstrong- as incompetent or wors, Armstrong ADMITTED (note: Tommy’s emphasis) to Sam Dash that he had provided information for that article.”(p.82)-Thompson, Fred D. ‘At That Point In Time.’ New York Times Book Company, 1975.

OK, so you basically have an admitted leak accusing someone who had accused him in the past of being a leak and had been correct in their assumption. I think my opinion is summed up best by the prowler when he says:

“Given the organization’s reputation and Armstrong’s, it’s not surprising that a Democrat mouthpiece like the Boston Globe would play this game on Thompson.”