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November 29, 2010 05:02 AM UTC
159 Comments
You’ll tell the families of those who were killed as a result of this release exactly why you thought it was a good idea.
Not just us, but the people who matter.
You have no skin in this game. Other people do.
But that release turned out to be a key part of getting out of Vietnam. It made it obvious that the government saw no way to win there.
Reading what’s released, we’re headed for war with Iran and Pakistan. And we’re losing in Afghanistan. If this release stops those wars from happening and forces us to look at what actually can be accomplished in Afghanistan – that will save a lot of lives.
The Pentagon Papers were written by Americans for Americans. This release includes correspondence from diplomats all over the world….
This is the danger with this release:
-No verification that this information is accurate…you don’t know what might be said in negotiations, etc.
-Most Importantly, the question of trust. Our national security depends on an intelligence network of foreign operatives who trust us enough to cooperate…Disclosure could bring death, not only to these operatives but to their families. The danger is that our source of intelligence which keeps us safe will disappear.
not intelligence cables.
We actually don’t want the world to think all our diplomats are engaged in espionage do we? That would be far worse than this if they did. Talk about losing trust.
Plus, not all the data has been released…it will be “leaked” over the next few weeks…
can save lives both short term and long term, by exposing the stupidity, destructive self interests, power elite weaknesses, and real motivations behind the industrial/military complex whose tentacles most surely include our diplomatic corp.
We all have skin in this game, Ralphie. Through our tax dollars, our children who find the military the only job around, not to mention the staggering deception that keeps so many loyally blind to the war machine.
I believe, strongly, that transparency is always good. It’s in the dark the devil does his best work.
I took my commitment to national security very seriously.
I’m not speaking for all here at CoPols now, but would respond to this specific post that there is something called “need to know basis” in security clearances.
In this particular case, it’s my contention that we ALL need to know what is going on in the world.
In order for this representative democracy to work optimally, especially in our current times, with our current risks, given the influence money has on our elected reprentatives….it’s crucial we know the underbelly of our Democracy.
I applaud Wikileaks, and pray the benefits far outweigh any casualties.
with Lincoln’s government “of the people, by the people, for the people” if the people do not even know such a great deal of what it’s government does in their name. It is willful ignorance at best to say we should abide by some of these “security” stamps on some of this stuff. it is not the same as battle plans or other top-secret covert documents, which these aren’t. They are pretty low-level State Department memos from what I can gather, not nuclear or war planning secrets.
We do no service to our nation to label anything and everything which might be an embarrassment as “secret” or “top secret” to save people’s reputations and their false pride. This is not the same as costing people’s lives. This is not even the Valerie Plame outing which did cost real lives.
If Obama were really the change agent he rode into Washington claiming to be, he might try harder to turn this ship of state in a new direction about these issues and be at least as pro-active as Clinton was before him in declassifying documents just like these. In fact, I believe it is the repudiation of Clinton’s declassification regime that prompts organizations like wikileaks to the dirty work for us and prompts government bureaucrats to ignore the clearance markings on these documents and give them to organizations like wikileaks.
As I understand, without outing you, that you run a business. One in which, without divulging more information, people’s lives depend on you.
You would want your reputation to be, “we follow all the laws we agree with?”
Not all that confidence-inspiring if you ask me.
ill conceived, often lacking good sense, anti-consumer, anti-family, anti-holistic, narrow in their application, unwieldy and cumbersome, costly and inefficient…run by a power elite embedded in their comfort zone with little to no collaborative flexibility.
But thanks for your slur on how I operate my business.
no disrespect to you intended at all in this question, but how far would you have taken that commitment? What if you saw Top Secret documentation detailing what you clearly knew to be war crimes? What would you have done then?
And honored my clearance.
International law, which America had the lead in shaping after World War II and the atrocities committed then, would require you to bring knowledge of those crimes out in the open.
But I’d like for someone to post something from this latest release that rises to the level of an international war crime that was worth destroying the ability of diplomats to communicate with candor.
I thought this was appropriate:
about the relative merits of what gets released and why rather than a carte blanche admonition against all releases.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to review all 250,00 plus documents in this release to see what rises to what level, but I actually do place a considerable bit of trust in the members of the fourth estate which were given access to this material and decided to publish. Additionally, the US Government was told what was going to be published and when and chose not to deal with it until after the fact. There could have been much done preemptively to minimize any negative impact to our diplomatic relations.
And the last point I’d like to make- if wikileaks can get this stuff, I’m pretty sure any other nation’s intelligence services worth their salt already had it. If not, then the world’s intelligence services are truly a colossal waste of all our nation’s valuable resources! let’s just use wikileaks for our intelligence gathering for free!
It’s unlikely that other nations leaders, diplomats, and intelligence services were already aware of some, if not most, if not all of these Wikileaks documents.
Those who weren’t aware? Mostly, the average citizens in ours and other countries who have to bear the burden of their govenments and leaders.
Obvious question: who does this arrangement of diplomacy (secrecy and classification) best serve?
and to a lesser extent, Sir Robin and Duke.
Your demagoguery (war crimes) is duly noted.
You seem to be confusing two responsibilities borne by me when I held my clearance or any other person with legitimate access to classified information.
The first responsibility, of course, is the protection of classified information. Pam alluded to that in her first post to this thread. The second responsibility, which is a responsibility that ALL employees have (I can’t speak for the military because I held my clearance in a civilian capacity), is to report wrongdoing. Those responsibilities are not necessarily related, nor are they mutually exclusive.
In the company for which I worked (and the government agency for which the company worked), there was a culture of reporting without retrubution. If someone had given me an order that I knew to be illegal, it would have been my responsibility not only to refuse carry out that order, but also to report that it had been given and that there was wrongdoing going on. I was very comfortable that I could do so without retribution. That would, of course, satisfy my responsibility to report the crime.
If I had gone to the newspapers directly in such a hypothetical situation, I probably would have (and should have) been fired on the spot. That wasn’t the procedure, and it would not have satisfied my reporting responsibilities. The procedure was to report the wrongdoing TO SOMEONE WHO COULD ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
That responsibility existed whether the wrongdoing was occurring in a classified program or not. It’s unrelated to classification or national security. Wrongdoing is wrongdoing.
In a classified program, I would have had the same responsibility, except that the person to whom I reported the wrongdoing would have been someone with the correct level of clearance and need to know. Typically, the farther up the chain you go, the wider the “need to know.” In the case of my own experience, that could have been, at minimum, the program manager, his/her boss, the Vice President for compliance, or even the President of the company. All were cleared, all had the need to know, and all had the power to fix the problem.
No holder of a security clearance can take it upon themselves to disclose classified information. You can’t just unilaterally declassify something because you think its classification is stupid. Classifying or declassifying information is the job of a “derivative classifier” (look it up) and it’s a very formal process.
I think it’s hypocritical to suggest that someone should be applauded for leaking classified information to wikileaks because you agree with the politics of it, while at the same time condemning Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, or Karl Rove for doing the same damned thing with Bob Novak.
Both acts were wrong.
First, I was asking a legitimate question to bound the discussion about when and where it might ever be proper to release classified information to the general public. I was not acting as a demagogue in so doing.
By your standards, it would seem the publication of the Pentagon Papers was a greater wrong, or at least an equal wrong, than the misinformation the Nixon administration was feeding to the American public about the prospects of the Vietnam War. Sending ever more men into the meat-grinder that was that war was preferable to Ellsberg violating his oath to preserve secrets I assume from your comments above.
The same holds true for the release of the Abu Ghraib photos by your standard, even though they had already made it to the top of the previous administration and nothing had to that point been done about any of those atrocities until they became public knowledge. The same for the lies told about Tilman’s death too I suppose.
By this standard, the only recourse anyone sworn to secrecy has is to report it upwards in a system that may very well be and often is very complicit in the illegalities involved.
The conflation of the specific outing of Valery Plame by the Bush administration is a false analogy. That was a direct attempt by some of the most powerful people in the world to punish her and her husband for an Op-Ed piece he wrote about that administration falsifying evidence to go to war in Iraq by using previously debunked evidence of a fictitious yellowcake transfer from Nigeria.
The present case is nothing of the sort. This is a low level military person doing what they perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be their duty to peremptorily declassify these documents. The former was a great conspiracy at the highest levels of our government. This, not so much.
And finally, in this specific case, it does not appear from the reports I’ve read or heard of on the radio that these documents constitute anything like highly classified national security matters. I heard Bill Keller on NPR tonight speak of trying to get the administration’s response unsuccessfully. It is also my understanding that any names which may compromise people’s individual security were redacted. These documents may be embarrassing, but they do not really threaten our national security posture in the least IMO.
Because I took an oath and took it seriously, while you’re just passing gas.
and undeserved. You think your “honor” compels you to play by the rules. I and others think those rules sometimes need to be broken. Your rigidity on this is not a point in your favor.
Has kept me out of jail.
this makes you just like almost everyone else in that regard. Hardly anything special in staying out of jail. And not convincing as an argument for the truth’s sake either.
In real life if someone who has had or has a clearance of any type came across a document laying out in the open somewhere, that person knows to immediately cover and protect the classified item without reading it. Once the document was protected a security organization would be contacted to come and get the damned thing.
Usually the last thing you want to do is read something you are not authorized to read. It means long boring debriefings at the least.
because they’re supposed to read them too Pam. Not all access is accidental.
Some people knew about Abu Ghraib long before the public knew. Classifying those pictures served no one’s interests except the perpetrators and their protectors in the military.
Rumsfeld’s claims that the many remaining pictures known to exist should not be published “to protect the troops” is hog-wash. Trying to tar and feather the media for reporting the high crimes and misdemeanors of our government is a false argument. It is the incompetents and criminals who cost lives, not those reporting the incompetencies and criminalities.
If you come across law or regulation breaking events you do report them. Often there is a huge penalty to pay which is why there are occasional attempts to create “whistle blower” protections for those who do tell the public what is going on. However, there is a lot of the old Sgt. Shultz “I see nothing” that goes on because of the penalty.
Does this stream of stuff, only appropriate term for what is being released due to it’s low level classification, non-importance, mix of agencies and age, provide anything important? That I don’t know. What I do know is the U.S. was given advance copy and apparently did nothing with it except to call the other governments and let them know their leaders will sound like idiots.
within the complicit organizations then? I don’t think passing that up the chain of command will do anything at all, and again I go to Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld knew all about that long before the rest of us did and had the Pentagon attempt to cover it up until it became public knowledge. That was when we started to see changes and criminal charges, charges which did not go nearly high enough up the chain IMO.
The information released has been run past American authorities now for several months; they’ve had ample opportunity to either (a) protect those mentioned or (b) have it redacted, which Wikileaks has been willing to do, despite all the badmouthing our government and its allies have done about the site.
There will be none killed as a result of this release, though a few diplomatic oxen might be gored…
24,000 of the 251,287 cables are classified as either “secret”, “noforn” (material too sensitive to be shared) or both.
I don’t need the world or myself to have access to behind the scenes delicate negotiations with Pakistan, or the effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, or to confidential sources, contacts and human rights activists. Not a single one of those 24,000 cables should be released in any way, shape or form, in my opinion.
The other 227,000 cables are probably more a cause of embarrassment to some of the diplomats involved in the exchanges than anything else but my hope is that the 4th estate has enough sense (and so far, it appears they do) to err on the side of caution and redact anything that remotely puts our national security or our diplomats, journalists, and activists in harm’s way.
Your attitude (“(a) protect those mentioned”) reminds me vividly of Bush’s claim that the outing of Valerie Plame wasn’t really as damaging as time has proven it to be. It still affects our foreign diplomacy relations to this day and has done irreparable harm to decades of work in nuclear disarmament.
that governments have had private access to this material for some time now – they’ve been quite clear that they knew more stuff was coming out. And Wikileaks has made many overtures to the government to cover truly sensitive data (which apparently were rebuffed the first time out, when it was the Afghanistan helicopter video – I’m guessing after that they were more willing to work on it…). They’ve given major press outlets weeks to work on the documents and (once again) to clear them with the government.
Since you’re bringing up Bush’s regime, ask yourself how many documents his administration had marked as “secret” just to get around FOIA requests. How many embarrassing facts and inconvenient crimes (Abu Ghraib, waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, PATRIOT Act library records searches) got swept under the rug in the name of “national security”? IMHO the document security ratings system has been abused to protect from inconvenient disclosure.
I agree many of these cables should be “NOFORN” – they document some very unflattering things about our allies and enemies, and sometimes about our own diplomatic corps. Most of it is the kind of stuff you usually use to diplomatically move your ally/enemy more in line with your own position – “do you really want this coming out”? I think that will be the biggest outcome of this particular dump – we lose some of the diplomatic dancing ability we’ve had with some of our more reluctant partners.
But counterbalancing that is that We The People now know some things that are actually important for us to know if we are to make an informed decision about where we want our government to go. Some of those things are disturbing, and some merely disappointing. But knowing them can strengthen our country in the long run – financially, militarily, and diplomatically.
Perhaps what we really need to concentrate on is not whether or not the document release was “bad” – it’s kind of a mixed blessing – but rather how it is that anyone, intelligence analyst or other, was able to compile this much data from this many different protected sources, and archive it without anyone noticing.
raises an excellent point and one I would also like an answer to.
The counterbalance to your counterbalance 🙂 is that we also now know about things that have no business being in the public forum.
I have some grave concerns about who gets to decide this, when, and for what reasons.
We instill trust in folks who understand geo-politics. The last thing I want is for “We the People” to weigh in on foreign affairs, after all a sizable percentage of Americans still think Obama is a Muslim and not born in America. Most people can’t even locate several of the countries at issue on the map, I for one think this will have huge implications on foreign policy and having showed our hand could lead to aggressive maneuvers by our enemies.
If you’re so interested in these matters then read up and get a international relations job otherwise this is nonsense to think that we should all be in on sensitive diplomatic conversations.
David your blind idealism shines through again.
to be my representatives in this republican democracy. I expect that they remain informed and worthy of my trust.
But when I see information that shows either a lack of information flow among those representatives, or outright misrepresentation about a situation, it is my duty as a citizen to effect a change in my representation such that it remains a “Government for the People”.
Case in point here – according to the documents, the Afghanistan government remains corrupt and the people distrustful of it, severely limiting our progress in there. Yet we are being told that our option is to extend our occupation with seemingly little change from our current deployment. That’s wasteful or our tax dollars, our world relations, and our soldiers’ lives.
as well as in Iraq, we have untold billions of dollars completely unaccounted for in both these countries. How is keeping that a secret in our nation’s best interests again? We should all docilely accept these things? I think not.
I’d say 20 years without parole is about the right degree of public recognition for these “citizens.”
There should be serious consequences if someone does this. So they only do so if they feel it is so important to reveal the information, it is worth paying the price.
excessive punishment would stifle anybody from doing their duty. This is why we have whistleblower protection statutes, because even losing your job may be too great a burden. Twenty years incarceration might make it impossible to know some of the secrets our government wants to keep from us.
an “every man for himself” system of national security.
That’s anarchy.
At least you admit to being an anarchist.
violates his sworn duty. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is harshly treated, and justifiably so. Ask the lt. col == soon to be private e-1 — who refused orders because he thinks Obama isn’t a citizen. Some secrets should be kept. I imagine Hitler would have been very interested in confirmed data that we were going to hit Normandy on June 5, 1944 (the original date of the D-day invasion.) My father-in-law fought in Normandy and may have lived his long and good life because the government “kept that secret”
For that matter, consider what happened to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
This release of docs has nothing to do, nor reaches the level of, what you’re citing.
What declared war are we in? Look, if we wanted to fucking destroy Afghanistan, Pakistan, N. Korea…we could.
There are, imo, no secrets in this document dump that should have been kept secret.
We’re entering a fascinating and terribly important phase of U.S. and world history, accompanied by the most egregious manifestations of greed and power ever witnessed in the history of the planet. I want transparency. I want accountability. I want knowledge. I want the public weal to take precedence over private gain.
I was studiously avoiding it myself, but since you went there…
Nuremberg taught the world that there are higher laws than national laws. There are higher standards than national secrets. German military could not claim protection by saying they were “just following orders”.
So there are people of conscience who decide whether the secrets they see are worthy of being kept. Their honor is not necessarily less than Ralphie’s because they choose to break their vow of silence on such matters in the course of examining their consciences and deciding that the secrets told serve a greater purpose than the secret kept. It is for history to decide to whether they were right.
Everyone is on their own in evaluating those things and always have been. Traitors have existed since the dawn of time and we use them to this very day to support our own national interests against the interests of their fellow countrymen. We can’t then claim any moral superiority for doing so.
The leaks have included detailed instructions about U.S. countermeasures for roadside bombs. That information will help the terrorists kill more of our soldiers. To say that in your opinion, there are no secrets is simply absurd, to be blunt. There were some 250,000 documents in the data dump. Have you read them all to be sure they don’t compromise our troops? Of course not.
So, if you don’t like the idea of putting the traitor who put our troops in danger in prison for 20 years, let’s compromise:
Shoot the son of a bitch.
Hitler was an evil man and he used force. Our government used force against him, so we’re just as bad as he is.
No, it’s for me to decide and every other loyal American. I don’t like traitors. This vicious coward is a traitor who put the lives of honorable men and women at risk.
Soldiers who abide by their oaths, as Ralphie and I did, are not the moral equivalence of the loathesome traitors you celebrate because they hate America. And if the First Amendment means anything at all, it protects my right to call a traitor a traitor.
This traitor should rot in prison until he dies.
Would Assange have still been a hero if he’d leaked that the Brits had an Enigma machine during WWII?
After all, transparency takes precedence.
That’s what Manning might get for his actions, under the current charges against him.
That, and he’ll probably have one of those “can’t touch a phone, computer, or appliance, car, or anything else with a computer chip in it for the rest of his natural life” riders thrown at him by the judge.
he’ll be forced to watch televangelists.
It’s probably top on some peoples’ lists…
and a red herring in one post. Well done V!!!
I never said our use of force against Hitler to stop Naziism was a moral equivalent. The whole thrust of my argument has been to draw Ralphie out, and now you, about whether either of you believe there are ever any circumstances when it would be appropriate to break a vow to keep a national secret. And apparently neither of you do think there is ever such a time, even in the most extreme cases such as those represented by literal war crimes.
You take the scoundrel’s refuge in equating what this PFC has done releasing these diplomatic cables, embarrassing indeed, with some crime of high treason, equivalent to the most dastardly acts conceivable such as the Rosenbergs.
And I believe people who desire America to actually live up to its promise in the world, the actual idea of America (freedom, justice, “the American way”, etc) are better patriots than those who continually apologize for its gravest misdeeds without remorse or regret. People who challenge ourselves and the government which represents us to hold to a higher standard than “well, they other guys did it first, most, best, etc” are the real patriots.
your turn.
leaking confidential information about U.S. countermeasures to roadside mines. That means more dead and maimed soldiers. It also leaked social security numbers for soldiers — which has no legitimate purpose other than harassing them. While you’re busy congratulating yourself about being a great patriot because you celebrate traitors, men and women who are far better than you are dying because of that treason.
You must be so proud.
I have not seen anything that rises to the level of what you’re describing, and I have not heard of this discussed much aside from your comments.
Also, I would think anything that was circulating in low classified diplomatic cables was not much of a secret worth keeping. At least not to the degree you’re making it out to be. We have ways to secure truly sensitive information if we wanted to. None of this was handled that way. Maybe your claims are actually indicting the people responsible for the security classifications of this sensitive data as much as it indicts the PFC?
But to say whom, would be to be putting words in their mouth, so I’ll resist the temptation. But, as usual, Digby nails it:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
When you release access to your email account for everyone to read at their leisure. Of course it’s interesting, and of course it’s informative. But the folks in this line of work, like any line of work, can’t do their job if everything they say might wind up in the New York Times. Sure the Times will run it, but it will do more harm than good. Ask yourself if you want diplomats who are negotiating the most sensitive matters in national security tomorrow to sanitize their comments and avoid being blunt out of fear their communications will wind up in the media.
was less than Highly Classified. And if you believe that cybersecurity is somehow state-of-the-art, you’re sorely mistaken.
This isn’t about secrecy, its about stupidity, and shining light on improper influences that lead to narrow interests being unduly represented by taxpayer dollars.
If this leads to an improvement in how our diplomats are chosen and assigned, as opposed to political gift assigments, it’ll be worth it.
Less than highly classified, but more than for public consumption. If you reveal anyone’s private communications, including mine, of course it will be more interesting. But again I don’t want a diplomatic corps that can’t send any communication without first asking how it would look on A1 of the New York Times. Even important political diplomatic jobs are still jobs that require some degree of non press release communication.
I post here under my own name. In every email I send I assume it could end up being public for the simple reason that after 5 replies/forwards what was originally very confidential is now in a quick view seen as fine to forward.
All that’s required is that people are willing to stand behind their words. And I think that’s something we want from those representing us.
With that said, I think there is great value in appropriate levels of secrecy. But as SR says, we have our government doing some things that are very wrong. And equally bad we have it doing a lot of things that are stupid and/or incompetent. This may well be a necessary step in fixing these problems.
and put it in the context that several former State department officials have already used: what do you gain by telling virtually every State Department official to essentially become a spy? You gain a complete lack of trust in your government’s diplomatic corps. It’s all fun and games when you know the CIA has a plant or two in each embassy; it’s another matter altogether when the entire embassy has essentially turned into a branch of the spy agency.
Release of this information, as well as that on the state of Afghanistan, serves as a vital curb to the abuse (and inept use) of government power.
The guy that supposedly leaked these documents, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, didn’t come by these documents honestly; he used his access to the military net to contact systems he was not supposed to be using (a serious no-no, criminally). But, having received the documents, I think the press has a presumptive duty to release the information in these document dumps and to perform their function as external government oversight agent.
Exactly. Anyone who says this isn’t a problem and can only lead to better communication and governance should start posting with their real name and with their address and phone number as their sig line.
Hmm…I’ll bet this guy isn’t so enamored of the (alleged) rapist jackass Assange.
I am one of those LB.
Duke Cox
818 Montclair Dr.
Palisade Colorado
970-379-3649
You’re not to whom I’m referring, obviously, and I’m not one to share your view that knowledge of everything government does should be public knowledge for everyone.
But you are pretty much a stud in my book.
That is not my view.
This is the comment to which I responded. Do you really believe that those two statements are equivalent?
P.S. All my enemies know where I live and I’m listed in the book, so I’m not nearly as bold as you suggest. Thanks, just the same. 🙂
While I don’t often disagree with Ralphie, this time, I think the value of this information outweighs what Ralphie rightly defends as a persons’ responsibility to their word of honor.
I tend to think, however, a person has to make a choice, just like a first mate on a ship that has to lead a mutiny against a crazy captain bent on destruction of himself and the whole ship. (Man, that would make a great book, eh?)
The great ship of the American State is careening toward the rocks. Even though he has broken an oath, I am sure he believes that he is helping to inform a much needed mutiny.
doing what the fourth estate has failed to do.
we all have to live with our consciences. I am glad that some err on the side of openness at times and against our government’s overweening need for secrecy for secrecy’s sake.
to satisfy some narcissist’s need for self-importance.
And we’ll never know for sure but… if we don’t go to war in Iran this release may be why.
Not.
Wha?
I’m pretty sure some kids from Colorado will get killed over there.
So that must be why you posted a diary on the escalated tensions in North Korea too.
Seriously David, if you use that logic for everything you put on the FP, you might as well write 50 diaries a day on the various national and international news stories that have theoretical, tangential and hypothetical ramifications for Colorado. Then change the name of your handle to The Associated Press.
And I am comfortable that this was front page worthy.
each measure your own self-worth by the number of comments that appear on a blog.
Not at all.
Because
Is exactly the beej’s thought process:
http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
You want more? They’re there.
It’s a false dichotomy.
I may have the exact meaning of this latin phrase wrong, but the way I understand it is that the quality of one thing, cannot be equated to the quality of another, simply on direct terms of observation.
So I have to assume that your comment was directed at him?
between David and Beej Ralph.
There’s no comparison. But I understand your point, and conceed on the merits, that your point is well made.
I see 91 comments where this is being argued intelligently and on the points by a large number of people. I view that as a reasonable measure that it was front page worthy.
for this post – http://www.coloradopols.com/di…
Personally I think both are of enough interest to political junkies in this state that they belong on the front page.
They can post what they want. And so can you. And so can I.
This is community of people who know one another (to some degree), and respect each others’ opinions (to another.)
We value the smaller circle our ideas bounce off in this forum more than we would a nationwide blog of anonymous douchebags.
that exact same thought yesterday DP.
As my mother was fond of saying “Great minds think alike” (although my sister’s corollary was “and so do mediocre ones”)
🙂
which deals with countries in the world. The USA is one such country. Colorado is part of the USA. DONE!
Or, alternatively, this story is as exciting as the gyrations of a water molecule. Colorado is always fighting over water. DONE!
by water molecule gyrations…
I have a real problem when the leaks or exposure of documents is as one diplomat called it “the 9/11 of world diplomacy”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/offic…
Our foreign relations was by all accounts at an embarrassing low in the Bush administration. If as is alleged Wikileaks is an effort to embarrass the US (as opposed to a miscarriage of justice)then they do harm. This I find reprehensible.
Wikileaks is only reporting on raw materials it receives – our diplomatic efforts are our own embarrassment.
And WL, before it received its boatload of material from PFC Manning, did a number of damaging leaks about other countries as well. You can read the Wikipedia entry on it if you want a broader view of the work it has done. They’ve covered corruption in Kenya and in international banks, environmental issues on both sides (toxic dumping, oil spills, as well as “climategate”), revealed the names of far-right party members in Britain, covered censorship issues in Australia, and gone up against the Church of Scientology.
was speaking diplomatically, or bluntly (reasonably secure in the knowledge that his candid comments would never see wide publication)?
I’m tending to fall on the side of wikileaks, mainly because I believe openness serves our republican form of government better than secrecy. I also believe that foreign policy is something that always is conducted in the same fashion with the same goals regardless of which party is in power, which is very curious to me – they fight tooth and nail over domestic issues but our foreign ones remain constant? It makes me wonder who is really making decisions there.
I don’t buy all this handwringing over the consequences of releasing these cables – at least the ones that have been published, which I don’t believe are going to be cause for anything but some embarrassment or discomfort among the officials involved. None of this is going to lead to a great diplomatic crisis. None of it is going to really be that big of a surprise to any of the participating parties.
Now, that’s just my opinion based on the summaries I’ve read here and there, and of the tiny percentage of documents that have been released for publication. Obviously we don’t know what all is in the mountain of documents wikileaks has been sitting on. Any bombshells in there? Any truly sensitive information that ought to have remained firmly in government hands? I don’t know. There were only about 13,000 that had really sensitive classifications, and I’ll defer to the government that those should remain secret. The rest of them? I can’t judge unless I know what’s in them – and neither can you.
What ultimately matters is neither the content of the cables nor a philosophical debate about a republic versus a democracy. The crux of this issue is the indiscriminate dumping of more than 250,000 cables from hard-working and patriotic U.S. diplomats around the world.
As Obama’s press secretary stated, the information contained in the cables represents field reporting that is candid and often incomplete. How are diplomats supposed to do their job if they fear that any opinion they express could become public knowledge? Why should any foreign citizen or government provide assist U.S. interests if their information becomes public knowledge?
Sounds like some pretty serious consequences to me. There is no moral equivalency between Wikileaks and past whistleblowers.
He’s the one who abused his security clearance to get these documents. I’m guessing he’s going to face a stiff penalty for his actions; we won’t be seeing him again for a long time, unless it’s on a videograph tour of military prison facilities.
Government has never trusted the press to protect its secrets (good or bad), and the press generally returns the favor by printing things it feels are important regardless of government wishes. See the Pentagon Papers, which were also highly controversial at the time.
The government’s duty, which it fails to do more frequently than most of us would like, is to conduct its business in the most open, honest fashion possible, and to protect those things it must hold secret. The ascribed duty of the press is to hold the government’s feet to the fire. I think the press has done a decent job with the Wikileaks document dumps so far, and I think those dumps have revealed shortcomings in both the protection of data and in the content of that data.
YMMV, but this continual march toward a police state and “need to know” is not something I think is the ideal of this country or its Founders.
Manning is the one who violated the terms of his clearance.
Wikileaks, no.
The indiscriminate dumping of classified documents is not responsible journalism.
Manning held a clearance and disclosed classified information.
Wikileaks doesn’t hold a clearance.
No scapegoating involved.
This has been going on since George Washington, so unless you think the U.S. has been a police state for the past two centuries you logic is flawed. BTW- The 24 hour news cycle is a business built on crisis, catastrophe, blood and guts etc. The problem is that the media, enemies of the U.S. tea party crazies can interpret this however they want. The problem here is that none of these influencers have any context to these conversations let alone understand the implications of the released intelligence.
Everyone is guessing as it pertains the ultimate fallout from this, the one truth here is that it severely impacts US diplomacy at a time when we’re faced with several crises and while we’re trying to reset diplomatic relations after a horrendous decade of foreign affairs.
This is not good no matter how you spin it. For example, now that you know the Pakistan dilemma are we now better prepared to exit the region. The answer is no, we don’t have any good options to work with, we cannot simply leave the region so that it can become another hub for terrorist plots and risk the infiltration of a nuclear facility by the hands of our sworn enemies.
It’s important to remember in foreign affairs, there are no permanent enemies or allies, only permanent interests.
We are not a global government, every state still has it’s interests and if you value American freedoms it’s incumbent to remind yourselves that there are a lot of bad actors out there.
The question you’re really asking is why a pfc had access to this stuff, and why he decided to download it and give it to wikileaks.
Keep in mind, when judging wikileaks, the actions they have actually taken, not what they potentially can do. They’ve released a small number of the large total they own. I stick by my judgment that what’s seen the light isn’t cause for supposing that “hard-working and patriotic U.S. diplomats” will now be unable to do their jobs.
We’ll know more as they release more – and we don’t know for sure that they will. Until then, I personally don’t worry if diplomats find that they have to be more diplomatic in their cables.
His SPC rating was downgraded after the leak of the helicopter video (and his clearance revoked).
we do know for sure they will be releasing more. The owner of Wikileaks said he intends to download all 257,000 plus cables.
It’s in one of the linked articles in this diary.
Must have missed that.
Do they intend to read them all first?
I suggest reading the article.
the US has declined that help, adopting the “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” line to “we don’t support the ongoing release of classified documents”.
Hint to United States Government: the documents are coming out regardless – you might want to get in on the action and redact the stuff that really might be damaging to individuals.
Who elected Assange to be in charge of what gets released to the public?
Would certainly come under fire for releasing so much classified info. Heads would roll at such irresponsible behavior.
unconstrained by the government with prior restraint, is publishing these documents. The Times, The IHT, the Guardian I believe are all publishing some pieces of this stuff.
And they do listen to the government’s requests when asked not to and then they make their own editorial decisions about what to do with the information they have received. It has always been thus since the founding of this free nation. The fourth estate is one of the most valued protections we have from a powerful government which may not always act in the best interests of its citizens.
…if U.S. policymakers are making uninformed decisions because cables are whitewashed and sugarcoated.
I said “diplomatic,” not “whitewashed and sugarcoated.” You think those mean the same thing?
We just have a difference of opinion about the consequences of Wikileaks for U.S. diplomats. Try to put yourself in the shoes of Foreign Service officer working in a U.S. embassy in the Middle East.
I think I would be expecting my communications to be intercepted in one form or another, at some point or another.
Of course, most interceptions would be expected to be from the host country (unpleasant perhaps, but much of this is just summarizing meetings or documenting what’s really going on in-country). And most of the rest would be foreign government interceptions.
This is different because it’s a leak to the public. It’s a bit shocking, perhaps, but so far the real damage is mostly limited to revelations about our foreign policy decisions (e.g. the Afghan Vice President walking $52 million of U.S. aid money over to the UAE embassy). There will be some hurt feelings over the characterizations of foreign officials perhaps, and maybe even one or two diplomats who hid a truly nasty streak from their negotiating partners, but I think realistically most political types have a hard enough skin that they can take the blunt assessments that seem to make up the majority of these cables.
You’re making assumptions. First, you characterize all the diplomats as “hard-working and patriotic” – how can you possibly know that all of them are? Now you want me to “put myself in their shoes.” I probably put too much stake in honesty and transparency to ever make it in the Foreign Service.
I find the fact that our foreign policy changes so little despite the affiliation of the executive and congressional majority, and I hope these leaks shed some light on that. I hope that there’s no tangible damage that results from them, and I’ll be there to condemn the leaks should it come about that that’s resulted from them. But I’m going to wait until that actually happens.
…that you’re now questioning the rectitude of U.S. diplomats overseas. My point is that the indiscriminate dumping of classified cables will have a chilling effect on their reporting. Although you may lament the content and policy outcomes of such cables, they are important. I don’t want Glenn Beck and other cable commentators chartering our foreign policy.
As for tangible damage, I think the writing is already on the wall. Hillary Clinton has undoubtedly spent countless hours apologizing to offended leaders rather than working to defuse a potential war between the two Koreas. I admit we can’t blame Wikileaks if we wake up tomorrow to a mushroom cloud over the Korean Peninsula but its actions have clearly weakened American influence as numerous media reports have already suggested. I don’t see any benefit to the dump other than showing we need to improve our cyber-security.
Though Clinton might be considering rescinding her order to have regular Foreign Service staff essentially spying on their counterparts. That we turned our State Department ambassadorial staff into spies was a dumb idea whose time has hopefully passed with the leak of that order.
With luck it will cause the State Department to revisit its security measures, and cause the Army to revisit the clearance screening procedures of its intelligence analysts. This would not have happened with better procedures and systems oversight.
what should happen is a thorough review of our national security posture, and the declassification of irrelevant documents. It is amazing what our government has classified over the years, often to protect incompetence, malfeasance or gross criminal conduct.
Everything is black and white with you. I point out that it’s impossible for everyone in the diplomatic corps to be paragons of virtue like you describe, so that means I’m “questioning the rectitude of U.S. diplomats overseas.”
It’s simple. You have to judge individuals individually. You have to judge each of these cables individually as well. Some may well do serious damage and should have remained secret, but we won’t know that until any such cables are exposed, will we? Maybe you have some extraordinary insight to know this before it comes to light, but I don’t, so I’m going to wait for all this stuff to be sorted out. There isn’t much we can do but wait anyway, is there?
This sounds to me like you don’t think Foreign Service Officers have much rectitude. Maybe you were being flip. Maybe you don’t know much about what they actually do. I don’t know. But since I apparently think all diplomats are paragons of virtue, let’s say for the sake of argument that they are all lazy and unpatriotic (in keeping with my “black and white” worldview). Do you think thousands of cables, which in fact have been exposed, would still affect how they do their job?
Yes, the jury may still be out on how much damage the leaks cause but I can assure you that it will impact the quality of field reporting from U.S. embassies and ultimately the effectiveness of U.S. diplomacy. I do have insight about this.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new…
PS: Wikileaks, and its founder, are not American organizations or individuals.
PPS: Treason refers to an against your own country.
This is the same genius that thinks her daughter Willow is being unfairly persecuted by the media because the kid got called out for calling someone a “faggot.” Enlightened or intelligent are not two words that will ever go in the same sentence with the Pain clan, no?
whose email account was hacked in 45 minutes. http://www.wired.com/threatlev…
Security expert she ain’t.
1. Our tax dollars at work….ahem.
2. We need professionals….not political patronage.
3. More transparency, not less.
I’m sure there’s more.
WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets
By ANDY GREENBERG
In a rare interview, Assange tells Forbes that the release of Pentagon and State Department documents are just the beginning. His next target: big business.
Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.
laying bare how the large banks pull their puppet strings and the lengths they will go to exploit the rest of us.
Although again, we will probably not find anything terribly surprising.
http://theautomaticearth.blogs…
A U.S. bank’s operations could be interesting depending on the bank and the details.
Wikileaks has to be careful with it though; if they release account information, it could turn against them quickly.
Treading on thin ice there, they are.
The U.S. government considers them at best an annoying pustule to be lanced.
If Assange is truly not guilty of the crime he’s been accused of, you can pretty much guess it was a dead-agent tactic that originated that charge.
The Wikileaks crowd has pissed off a large number of people, all of them with a whole lot of power, and some of them with Bad Attitude. So far what they haven’t done it turned the public against them.
…won’t survive another year. The Russians and Chinese aren’t big fans of being embarrassed.
If he’s murdered, there’s no reason to think our guys won’t be behind it.
Our President doesn’t have the onions to do it. He won’t even try to grab him.
Am I reading you right? You’re making light of murder, you realize.
Not making light. I do think he deserves to be killed, as I’m sure there are people that will suffer and be murdered over his ego trip.
Unfortunately, the U.S. can’t really do that to him, so I’d be happy just having an SF team snatch him up from whatever hole he’s hiding in and lock him up forever.
As I said way upthread somewhere, let’s not count bodies before they’ve been killed.
It’s easy to imagine that happening, but it hasn’t happened.
Knee-jerk revenge is one of the worst aspects of human nature. Resist it. At least wait until something actually happens, and that it can be clearly and completely proven that it wouldn’t have come to be if it weren’t for these leaks.
Rotting in prison from a trumped-up charge? CIA or Scientology.
Weird radiation sickness? Russians.
Bomb attached to car by motorcycle while on road? Israelis.
Poisoned pencil? North Korea.
Eric Holder, in all of his previously demonstrated brilliance, will choose to have him tried on American Idol, because it’s just…well…fair.
this is way too George Smiley for me. Assassinated? Please!
Ask some former Russian spies about that.
by what a former Rusian spy has to live by?
Our standards are different. Our view of the world is different. Our life experiences are different. Out causus belli, our fate, circumstance and loves….all different.
You, LB, are an imposter.
I thought we were talking about Assange. Not some former Russian spies. I don’t think he’s on anybody’s hit list.
Google Litvinenko.
I think you might be misunderstanding exactly what’s going on in Russia.
Hey, go Russia, eh?
it sounds like you’re chearleading for this approach. So you think assassination is morally acceptable in any cases? You know the US specifically outlawed the practice decades ago, right?
This is one of my chief issues with many people on the right. They claim to be law and order types until the actual laws don’t go their way, then they look for any convenient end-runs around those laws they don’t like.
Torture not legal in your country? No problem! Extraordinary rendition works great sending them to more torture friendly countries? Assassination? Don’t worry, the Russkies can take care of that for you.
Disgusting!
I’m just saying he might have taken himself a little too seriously when dealing with folks like the Russians and the Chinese.
The thought of him running scared make me happy, as he likely caused deaths and persecution with his stunt.
Yes, I was aware that we’re not allowed to assassinate people anymore, but what’s the difference between a hellfire from a drone or a rifle shot or a poisoned drink? In some cases I think assassination is appropriate, but not of Assange by us. I’m pretty sure some countries don’t feel that way, though.
to the punch.
They’ve issued an arrest warrant for him for alleged “sex crimes.”
he will get a reasonably fair trial in Sweden on those charges. At least more fair than random hit squads will be I suppose.
Apparently the charges are fairly serious, but one has to wonder at the timing.
The timing stinks to high heaven.
“…as he likely caused deaths and persecution with his stunt.”
Gotta any meaningful proof of this assertion? Really, I mean there is nothing I’ve read or heard which actually jeopardizes anyone’s life. Maybe you could share more.
And the there’s this:
“I’m pretty sure some countries don’t feel that way, though.”
So morality is a fungible commodity to you. It’s okay if we don’t assassinate people, but you would be willing to accept their assassination by other countries. Sort of like our extraordinary rendition program. Torture is so distasteful when you actually have to get your hands dirty doing it. Better to outsource it to some lower wage countries instead.
I’m just saying the Russians could give a shit what the rest of the world thinks about them assassinating people they are angry with, and if you read the link, it looks like he’s stirred up a russian bee’s nest.
As far as moral relativism goes, that’s the left’s job. I think it’s fairly certain that he’s exposed some innocents to people that would love to do them harm, and I don’t have any sympathy for him.
WikiLeaks isn’t just Assange – he’s just the highest profile member of their board.
But powerful people won’t stop at Assange. Just at the time this first round of cable releases was to occur, the WikiLeaks website suffered a massive denial of service attack. WL has apparently been using rented server space on a US-based host to work around the DDoS attack. Cyber-warfare at its open best.
Assange opened his mouth to speak, and he didn’t get more than a few words out and was cut off. He must be irrelevant to pull the plug on him whenever he tries to speak!
I’m saying going after him is irrelevant to the overall survival of WL – WL is more than just him, it’s got a governing board, has won journalism awards, and is apparently pretty persistent as a web presence.
His own notoriety in a way serves to distract from the documents themselves.