Starvin Larry

THE PENTAGON — The Department of Defense is set to release new security rules later this week, making it clear that consequences for violations don’t apply equally to everyone, sources say. The revisions will make explicit what has until recently been an informal system that occasionally treated powerful people the same as peons, and, more rarely, sometimes failed to bring the wrath of God down on regular people acting out of conscience.

“When Snowden and Manning happened, releasing thousands of classified documents to civilian sources without approval, the way forward was pretty clear,” explained Col. Antonio Jimenez, who helped craft the new regulations. “Manning is in a military prison and Snowden sleeps with one eye open.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter says that things “get complicated” when high-level individuals start mishandling, or even deliberately leaking information to the public.

“Snowden was just a civilian analyst, and Manning was an Army private,” Carter noted. “They didn’t have a chance. Manning had the right idea, becoming a woman and all, but she did it after she was convicted, so the victim angle didn’t do her any favors. If she’d done it before she’d probably already have a book deal and a job at MSNBC.”

“When Petreaus was caught giving secret information to his mistress, my predecessors initially ignored it, because Iraq,” Carter said. “Plus she was kind of hot. Unfortunately, the new guidance from the White House says that military violations, but not political ones, must be dealt with harshly.”