Wikileaks leak embarresses a lot of countries [Archive] - HungAngels

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Ben

11-29-2010, 01:50 AM

YouTube - Wikileaks leak embarresses a lot of countries (28Nov10) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsMq2Fp3mwY)

Ben

11-29-2010, 01:54 AM

YouTube - WikiLeaks releases 250,000 diplomatic cables (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUPocxZru-k)

Ben

11-29-2010, 01:58 AM

A short biography of Julian Assange:

YouTube - WikiLeaks: the biggest leak in history (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8veNn-C_bZI)

Ben

11-29-2010, 02:01 AM

YouTube - "WikiLeaks & Their Ilk Must Be Held Accountable For The Damage They're Causing" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorNbwBvSRM)

Ben

12-01-2010, 02:56 AM

YouTube - Carne Ross on the BBC News Channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMn4q4FNHg)

russtafa

12-02-2010, 03:30 AM

I would say this guy has a death wish

hippifried

12-02-2010, 06:28 AM

He just wants the Guiness record.

african1

12-02-2010, 07:49 AM

The question is: what would he do when the documents run out?

russtafa

12-02-2010, 12:00 PM

i hope he has life insurance

south ov da border

12-02-2010, 07:28 PM

supposedly he's in Britain right now and Interpol knows his location...

hippifried

12-02-2010, 08:35 PM

So far, I'm not seeing this so called "danger" from wikileaks. Governments always snivel when their confidentials get leaked, & the "news" services are just pissed because they all got the stuff at the same time & none of them could take credit for a scoop. You know damn well that they're all digging through everything to see if they can piece something together that nobody else has reported yet. It's just scandalous crap so far. I think this is all just a test. Wait till the banks & brokers start getting the same treatment.

As for Julian Assange: He's just the public face. Interpol has no jurisdiction or power to arrest him for anything. If the Brits decide to take him into custody, it'll just be this rape charge in Sweden. The timing of the rape charge is a bit suspect. We'll see. But I don't think wikileaks will collapse either way. It's not a one man operation, & if the Swedes trumped this up, it'll just piss the rest of them off & make Sweden a target.

I find it all quite interesting, & I can't help but wonder why all the "free press" people & news services aren't coming to his defense.

Ben

12-03-2010, 06:12 AM

Interesting YT vid about Julian Assange....

YouTube - Inside Wikileaks - UK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g_VOdvqn5I)

PomonaCA

12-03-2010, 12:35 PM

hippifried

12-03-2010, 07:33 PM

Ridiculous, yet typical skepticism from the talking parrot.
Parrots aren't skeptics. Ever. But of course you already knew that, what with you being incapable of formulating an independant thought & all.

thx1138

12-08-2010, 10:03 PM

If one has no shame how does he/she feel embarrassment? Heads of state are mostly all mass murderers. Their opinion of one another pales in comparison.

Amsterdamage

12-09-2010, 02:52 PM

meh, usually you (Ben) and i are totally in sync and on the same page, but i think i'll have to agree with u on this one, hippie. i'm not impressed by wikileaks either. have any of you actually read these so called 'top secret' docs? i mean come on, it's merely just memos from meetings etc. sure it's classified stuff but no where near 'top secret'. plus, the documents edited, assange let that slip in an interview last week. the REALLY juicy stuff isn't in there, that's been taken out. just like a couple of months back when they came out with stuff about afghanistan, remember, a couple of 'collateral damage' vids, which is hardly anything new in a war, is it.

the fact that everybody (government, mainstream media) spends so much attention to this, screams to me that this is a distraction and/or a highly exaggerated story.
still, it is an highly entertaining one!

hippifried

12-09-2010, 07:20 PM

There was nothing that was actually classified top secret. This over the top response tells me that it's not just the US government that's scared. I hope they start going after some of these financials.

Ben

12-11-2010, 01:55 AM

Monday, Nov 29, 2010 08:10 ET WikiLeaks: U.S. bombs Yemen in secret

Diplomatic cables reveal the U.S. has been launching strikes in Yemen, but attacks are claimed by local government

By Justin Elliott (http://www.salon.com/author/justin_elliott/index.html)
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/29/wikileaks_yemen_revelations/md_horiz.jpg AP
Gen. David Petraeus

One of the most interesting items in the trove (http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/) of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks confirms that the Obama Administration has secretly launched missile attacks on suspected terrorists in Yemen, strikes that have reportedly (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/11/american_airstrikes_yemen) killed dozens of civilians. The government of Yemen takes responsibility for the attacks.
The January 2010 cable (http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10SANAA4.html) describes a meeting between Gen. David Petraeus and President Saleh of Yemen, in which they discuss U.S. airstrikes.
Here's the key section (emphasis ours):
President Obama has approved providing U.S. intelligence in support of ROYG [Republic of Yemen government] ground operations against AQAP targets, General Petraeus informed Saleh. Saleh reacted coolly, however, to the General's proposal to place USG [U.S. government] personnel inside the area of operations armed with real-time, direct feed intelligence from U.S. ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] platforms overhead. "You cannot enter the operations area and you must stay in the joint operations center," Saleh responded. Any U.S. casualties in strikes against AQAP would harm future efforts, Saleh asserted. Saleh did not have any objection, however, to General Petraeus' proposal to move away from the use of cruise missiles and instead have U.S. fixed-wing bombers circle outside Yemeni territory, "out of sight," and engage AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] targets when actionable intelligence became available. Saleh lamented the use of cruise missiles that are "not very accurate" and welcomed the use of aircraft-deployed precision-guided bombs instead. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh said, prompting Deputy Prime Minister Alimi to joke that he had just "lied" by telling Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the ROYG.
The three strikes mentioned at the end there each occurred in December 2009, the month before the cable was written. The Dec. 17 Abyan attack killed 55 people, 41 one of whom were civilians, including 21 children Amnesty International later reported (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/11/11/american_airstrikes_yemen). Amnesty had also suspected (http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/yemen-images-missile-and-cluster-munitions-point-us-role-fatal-attack-2010-06-04) that a U.S. cruise missile was used in the attack because of images of debris found at the scene. This new cable seems to bear out that suspicion.
The Dec. 17 attack in the city of Arhab occurred the same day, though it's not clear who was killed.
And finally, here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/25/world/middleeast/25yemen.html) is a contemporaneous report that mentions the Dec. 24 Shebwa attack. Here (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/Yemeni-Forces-Launched-Second-Attack.pdf) (.pdf) is the official Yemeni statement on that attack, which falsely claims rseponsibility. The Yemeni government said the strike targeted a meeting of Al Qaeda leaders, including the American-born Anwar Al-Awlaki. But he turned out either not to have been there, or not to have been killed. And again, it's not clear whether any civilians were killed in the attack, which the government claimed killed 30 people.
There has been speculation that the Wikileaks revelation will spark a backlash against Saleh, but as of yet nothing has been reported.

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter.

russtafa

12-11-2010, 03:58 AM

The west should turn Julian over to the Saudis and the problem is over.No big deal

Ben

12-14-2010, 06:05 PM

Quoting Glenn Greenwald: "... the only member of Congress who has thus far stood up and defended WikiLeaks and opposed prosecutions is . . . the universally disparaged GOP Rep. Ron Paul (http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ron-pauls-passionate-defense-of-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-on-house-floor/)."

YouTube - Lying is Not Patriotic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxPB9yy7IJ4)

trish

12-14-2010, 07:38 PM

Ben

12-18-2010, 09:39 PM

Good ol' Ralph Nader has an interesting take:

YouTube - Ralph Nader: WikiLeaks is a 'Vast Distraction' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvF_8blh85k)

hippifried

12-19-2010, 07:22 AM

Stealing classified materials and indiscriminately publishing them without regard for their content and without regard for the consequence of publication is romantically irresponsible. The information so far divulged has proved no big deal (though the leaks have diminished our capacity to keep Iran's nuclear ambitions in check) but there is a potential for real disaster if WikiLeaks continues with these practices. It's romantic to think that absolute transparency is an value that is absolutely essential for the democratic rule. But privacy is also a value that all democratic societies need respect as well. Whistle-blowing is not same as thing as publishing the names of Afghanis who cooperate with American soldiers. Whistle-blowing is not revealing that some diplomats have noticed Gaddafi travels with a hot blond nurse. Whistle-blowing is not the wholesale publishing of every kilobyte of classified information you're able to obtain. WikiLeaks needs to rethink the whole issue of what it means to be a whistle-blower.
Don't fall linto the rhetoric trap. As far as anybody knows, Wikileaks didn't steal anything. They're not claiming whistleblower status either, nor are they trying to analyze any of this information. They're not writing the story. They just supplied the raw data to the folks who's business is writing the story, from the leak who sent it all to them.

As for all this talk about danger: The first ones to receive this bundle from wikileaks was the US State Department, who were given every opportunity to make a case for redacting anything that could be considered dangerous. They didn't. There was a long lag, & all State did was stamp their feet & say "MINE!! Give it back or else!". Does that kind of response work anymore? Did it ever?

Ben

12-19-2010, 01:18 PM

Interesting quotes from reputable sources:

Representative John Conyers: "Many feel that the WikiLeaks publication was offensive. But being unpopular is not a crime, and publishing offensive information is not either. And the repeated calls from politicians, journalists, and other so-called experts crying out for criminal prosecutions or other extreme measures makes me very uncomfortable."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think -- I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation."

Vice President Joe Biden: "I don't think there's any damage. I don't think there's any substantive damage, no. Look, some of the cables are embarrassing . . . but nothing that I'm aware of that goes to the essence of the relationship that would allow another nation to say: "they lied to me, we don't trust them, they really are not dealing fairly with us."

trish

12-19-2010, 06:37 PM

Hi hippiefried. I'm always happy to see your posts. But how dare you disagree with me???

Seriously. My real problem with WikiLeaks is with what they symbolize to their fans: i.e. the cleansing power absolute transparency and the confidence that any price paid for the goal is worth it. It's just too puritan for my soiled soul.

But to your points:

It's my understanding the WikiLeaks knowingly accepted stolen classified information. I'm not a lawyer. I don't even pretend to be one on the internet, so that might not fit the formal definition of stealing...but it fits my warped definition of the term.

To the extent that whistle-blowing is not the purpose behind WikiLeaks' endeavors, my criticism that they aren't whistle-blowers misfires...rebounds against the firewall and gets redirected at those fans of WikiLeaks who praise it for it's whistle-blowing. It is perhaps they who need to rethink what whistle-blowing is.

I agree that WikiLeaks didn't try to analyze the data. It just published it. But that's one of my beefs with WikiLeaks. It seems to me to be irresponsible and dangerous to publish stolen classified State documents without a care as to what they say, and what consequences might follow from their publication. At least they warned the U.S. and other States. Which brings us to ...

...your last point that the U.S. didn't handle the situation prior to publication very well. I think we concur there, though I can't think what the U.S. could've done. To bargin with WikiLeaks sanctions their receipt of classified information. Not bargining with them led to the publication of that information.

I really don't have very strong feelings about any of this. I kind of like the idea of something like WikiLeaks keeping everyone on their toes. What I don't like is the puritanism of it's fan base, and perhaps of Asange himself.

Hey, if I don't get back to boards until then, have a great Christmas. Happy Holidays everyone.

Ben

12-20-2010, 08:28 PM

YouTube - Ray McGovern Defends Julian Assange! "You Should Be Following His Example" To American Media (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ1TOtApOqY&feature=related)

Ben

12-24-2010, 07:04 PM

Is Open Diplomacy Possible?

Peter Singer (http://www.project-syndicate.org/contributor/185)

2010-12-13

PRINCETON – At Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson, who was president of the university before he became president of the United States, is never far away. His larger-than-life image looks out across the dining hall at Wilson College, where I am a fellow, and Prospect House, the dining facility for academic staff, was his family home when he led the university.
So when the furor erupted over WikiLeaks’ recent release of a quarter-million diplomatic cables, I was reminded of Wilson’s 1918 speech in which he put forward “Fourteen Points” for a just peace to end World War I. The first of those fourteen points reads: “Open covenants of peace must be arrived at, after which there will surely be no private international action or rulings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”
Is this an ideal that we should take seriously? Is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a true follower of Woodrow Wilson?
Wilson was unable to get the Treaty of Versailles to reflect his fourteen points fully, although it did include several of them, including the establishment of an association of states that proved to be the forerunner of today’s United Nations. But Wilson then failed to get the US Senate to ratify the treaty, which included the covenant of the League of Nations.
Writing in The New York Times earlier this month, Paul Schroeter, an emeritus professor of history, argued that open diplomacy is often “fatally flawed,” and gave as an example the need for secret negotiations to reach agreement on the Treaty of Versailles. Since the Treaty bears substantial responsibility for the resurrection of German nationalism that led to the rise of Hitler and World War II, it has a fair claim to being the most disastrous peace treaty in human history.
Moreover, it is hard to imagine that if Wilson’s proposals had formed the basis of the peace, and set the tone for all future negotiations, the history of Europe in the twentieth century would have been worse than it actually was. That makes the Treaty of Versailles a poor example to use to demonstrate the desirability of secrecy in international negotiations.
Open government is, within limits, an ideal that we all share. US President Barack Obama endorsed it when he took office in January 2009. “Starting today,” he told his cabinet secretaries and staff, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.” He then noted that there would have to be exceptions to this policy to protect privacy and national security.
Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has admitted, however, that while the recent leaks are embarrassing and awkward for the US, their consequences for its foreign policy are modest.
Some of the leaked cables are just opinion, and not much more than gossip about national leaders. But, because of the leak, we know, for example, that when the British government set up its supposedly open inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war, it also promised the US government that it would “put measures in place to protect your interests.” The British government appears to have been deceiving the public and its own parliament.
Similarly, the cables reveal that President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen lied to his people and parliament about the source of US airstrikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen, telling them that Yemen’s military was the source of the bombs.
We have also learned more about the level of corruption in some of the regimes that the US supports, like those in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in other countries with which the US has friendly relations, notably Russia. We now know that the Saudi royal family has been urging the US to undertake a military attack on Iran to prevent it from becoming capable of producing nuclear weapons. Here, perhaps, we learned something for which the US government deserves credit: it has resisted that suggestion.
Knowledge is generally considered a good thing; so, presumably, knowing more about how the US thinks and operates around the world is also good. In a democracy, citizens pass judgment on their government, and if they are kept in the dark about what their government is doing, they cannot be in a position to make well-grounded decisions. Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.
Nevertheless, it isn’t always the case that openness is better than secrecy. Suppose that US diplomats had discovered that democrats living under a brutal military dictatorship were negotiating with junior officers to stage a coup to restore democracy and the rule of law. I would hope that WikiLeaks would not publish a cable in which diplomats informed their superiors of the plot.
Openness is in this respect like pacifism: just as we cannot embrace complete disarmament while others stand ready to use their weapons, so Woodrow Wilson’s world of open diplomacy is a noble ideal that cannot be fully realized in the world in which we live.
We could, however, try to get closer to that ideal. If governments did not mislead their citizens so often, there would be less need for secrecy, and if leaders knew that they could not rely on keeping the public in the dark about what they are doing, they would have a powerful incentive to behave better.
It is therefore regrettable that the most likely outcome of the recent revelations will be greater restrictions to prevent further leaks. Let’s hope that in the new WikiLeaks age, that goal remains out of reach.

Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and the author, most recently, of The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty.

onmyknees

12-24-2010, 11:26 PM

onmyknees

12-24-2010, 11:33 PM

Stealing classified materials and indiscriminately publishing them without regard for their content and without regard for the consequence of publication is romantically irresponsible. The information so far divulged has proved no big deal (though the leaks have diminished our capacity to keep Iran's nuclear ambitions in check) but there is a potential for real disaster if WikiLeaks continues with these practices. It's romantic to think that absolute transparency is an value that is absolutely essential for the democratic rule. But privacy is also a value that all democratic societies need respect as well. Whistle-blowing is not same as thing as publishing the names of Afghanis who cooperate with American soldiers. Whistle-blowing is not revealing that some diplomats have noticed Gaddafi travels with a hot blond nurse. Whistle-blowing is not the wholesale publishing of every kilobyte of classified information you're able to obtain. WikiLeaks needs to rethink the whole issue of what it means to be a whistle-blower.

I'm stopping here. It's Christmas Eve, and Trish and I are in agreement, and all is well in the world. The I'm not sure where we go from here , but it sure is nice while it lasts !!!!!!

Trish...with absolutely sincerity...Merry Christmas baby xoxo

Ben

12-28-2010, 12:14 AM

Ben

12-28-2010, 10:48 PM

Ben....One of your own....Jeffrey Toobin, liberal legal analyst on a left of center network, CNN. Maybe you should listen to him !!

http://www.cnn.com/video/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_freevideo+%28RSS%3A +Video%29#/video/bestoftv/2010/12/01/exp.am.intv.toobin.wikileaks.cnn

Woodward And Wikileaks

by digby

People have varying beliefs about Wikileaks, obviously, and it's fair that your mileage may vary. But it's unacceptable (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1012/23/ps.01.html) that we still have people out there spreading falsehoods about it as Jeffrey Toobin did on last night's Spitzer Parker (with Naomi Wolf and Clay Shirky.)

TOOBIN: If you intend to simply blow out 250,000 documents that are at tremendous -- putting individuals at risk, the United States government employees at risk, people who cooperate with the United States government at risk, that is not up to Julian Assange. That is up to the United States government.

WOLF: Scooter Libby did that.

SHIRKY: But Assange went with -- went with "Guardian," went through "Spiegel." In this case, the "Times" by proxy and they redacted some of the documents and held some of the documents back.

TOOBIN: Some of it. They redacted some of it.I don't know why people persist in saying this, but it reveals either bad faith or just sheer journalistic malpractice at this point. And I think it's at the heart of much of the dispute because it seems to have been believed quite widely at the time the diplomatic cables were first released, and it has colored the reaction to it.

Clay Shirky went on to correct Toobin, but his views on this are so set in stone that it made no difference. And he ended up intellectually twisting himself into a pretzel and revealing himself to be quite the authoritarian because of it, which is ironic to say the least, since he's supposed to be a journalist and a legal scholar:

SPITZER: And back to Woodward, where does Woodward fit in to this?

SHIRKY: So I think that Woodward is not a criminal for publishing leaked documents but I also think that Assange is not a criminal for publishing leaked documents. However, I also, also think that if I'm wrong about that, that the way in which I would be wrong is going through the court system. Not through an extra legal running of WikiLeaks off the network.

The damage to me -- Jeffrey to your earlier point about the slippery slope, the non-slippery slope argument is the State Department has currently committed itself to making it very difficult for autocratic governments to force information off the Internet. And we're suddenly providing not just a recipe but a rationale that's making everyone from Lubchenko (ph) to Kim Jong-il laugh.

TOOBIN: But see, you know, again, this is a slippery slope argument.

SHIRKY: No.

TOOBIN: It is, it is. Because the fact that someone takes United States government documents, secret, no foreign distribution, and says that shouldn't be on the Internet. To say that North Korea shouldn't have a free press, to say that Russia shouldn't allow journalists to -- I mean, I think it is easy to draw a distinction between the two.

WOLF: Jeff, can I talk about the Espionage Act because that's really what's at stake now that they've invoked it. I predicted in my book "The End of America" that sooner or later, journalists would be targeted with the Espionage Act in an effort to close down free speech and (INAUDIBLE) of government. And we have a president for that. In 1917, the Espionage Act was invoked to go after people like us who are criticizing the first World War. Publishers, educators, editors. Wait, and people were put in prison. They were beaten. One guy got a 10-year sentence for reading the First Amendment. And that intimidation effectively closed down dissent for a decade in the United States of America.

The Espionage Act has a very dark and dirty history. And when you start to use the Espionage Act, to criminalize what I'm sure you've handled classified documents in your time as a serious journalist, you know perfectly well that every serious journalist has seen or heard about classified information and repeated it. When you start to use the Espionage Act to say reporting is treachery, reporting is spying, it's espionage, you criminalize journalism. And that's the history that our country has shown.

TOOBIN: I recognize there is that history. And I'm familiar with the red scare, too. America is different now.

WOLF: Oh, it's worse in some ways.

TOOBIN: Well, I would disagree.

SPITZER: I want to ask Jeff a question though, because I want to come back to this Woodward distinction. You would agree with Clay and Naomi, I think, that Julian Assange would be precisely Bob Woodward if he had been the recipient of these documents, is that correct?

TOOBIN: I'd have to know a lot more.

SPITZER: But it might be the case.

TOOBIN: It well might be the case.

SPITZER: OK. So you're sort of clear articulation of the beginning that he clearly violated something maybe not so much.

TOOBIN: I'm not sure. Certainly the attorney general of the United States seems to think criminal -- criminal activity was involved here. But I think the wholesale taking of enormous quantities of classified information and putting it on the Internet, even if you don't put all 250,000 documents on, I think that is a meaningful distinction from what Bob Woodward does.

SPITZER: It seems to me that Bob Woodward arguably did something much more egregious. He took real-time decisions about why we were going to war in Afghanistan, the discussions are rationale, where we would go spoke to the most senior political and military officials in the nation and blasted that out in the book. A clear distinction.

TOOBIN: Well, again, there is a distinction in part because the president of the United States and the vice president are allowed to declassify anything they want at any time for any reason. So if the president declassified --

SPITZER: A lot of people who didn't have that power were sourced in that book. Seemed to be speaking in clear violation. They, in fact, should be subject to criminal investigations.

TOOBIN: I always wondered why -- why Woodward gets away with it. It's an interesting question.This is where the argument takes you folks, whether you like it or not. Toobin struggled mightily to figure out a way out of that without sounding like a total dolt and he was unable to. If you think that Assange is guilty of a crime then Bob Woodward (and countless other investigative reporters) are guilty too. There just isn't any way around it.

I recommend that you read the whole exchange because it was very revealing. Shirky has taken the most nuanced view although to me it's become nearly incomprehensible as it's evolved. Naomi Wolf is a Wikileaks supporter (and has made some controversial statements as to the Assange Swedish charges, which were not discussed at all since they were irrelevant to the issue.) Toobin and Parker are both antagonists --- and both trafficked in bizarre fearmongering and relied on awkward assertions of American exceptionalism to make their points. It's interesting how that shakes out.

Ben

12-28-2010, 10:54 PM

This is, well, imperative: "If you think that Assange is guilty of a crime then Bob Woodward (and countless other investigative reporters) are guilty too. There just isn't any way around it."

Ben

12-28-2010, 10:57 PM

Our nation's secrets, stuck in a broken system
By Jack Goldsmith
Friday, October 22, 2010

Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars contains remarkable revelations about the inner workings of the administration's national security team and the development of its policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Equally remarkable is how much classified information is in these revelations -- so much classified information, in fact, that it calls into question the legitimacy of the presidential secrecy system.
The fireworks begin in Chapter 1, which recounts President Obama's post-election intelligence briefing from Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence in the Bush administration. Several highly classified programs and their code names are described. Subsequent chapters reveal classified reports, memorandums, conversations, programs, meetings and the like.
Woodward unquestionably received much of this information from senior government officials (just as he seemed to receive classified information from officials for his books about the Bush era). One cannot assume that the information came from the people being quoted or from the authors or recipients of documents; much of it could have come from second- and third-hand sources.
Information becomes classified when someone with authority in the executive branch determines that its revelation would cause "exceptionally grave damage" (in the case of top-secret information) or "grave damage" (in the case of secret information) to national security. Overclassification is rampant. But a great deal of the information revealed in "Obama's Wars" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/woodward-obamas-wars/) -- such as a "breakthrough" National Security Agency eavesdropping technology -- seems indisputably properly classified and includes things that the government should want to keep secret.

Government employees pledge not to disclose classified information, and breaches of the agreement can be enforceable by civil or criminal sanctions. Some senior national security officials can declassify information or delegate in writing the authority to declassify. It is conceivable that these officials declassified some of the information given to Woodward, but it is hard to imagine that they declassified most or all of it.
President Obama sat for an interview with Woodward for the book. He comes across in the book as circumspect, and he expressly refuses, when asked, to discuss classified information. The White House has said recently that the president did not authorize his aides to disclose classified information to Woodward. Still, because the White House clearly gave the green light to cooperate with Woodward, we should not expect a leak investigation anytime soon.
Yet even if the giant disclosures of classified information have no legal consequences, they still harm national security by delegitimizing the presidential classification system.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/James_R._Clapper) recently criticized leakers of classified information, saying that President Obama had expressed "great angst" about the bevy of leaks (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-intelligence-director-angered-media-leaks/story?id=11817252) surrounding reported terrorist threats in Europe. Such messages are weakened, however, by the seemingly opportunistic top-level leaking reflected in Woodward's book.
The problem is not just hypocrisy. Classified disclosures from people near the top indicate a lack of seriousness about national security secrecy that inevitably influences the respect that lower-level officials give security classifications in their discussions with journalists. The secrecy system then "becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless, and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion," as Justice Potter Stewart wrote in the Pentagon Papers case (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0403_0713_ZC3.html).
The Woodward disclosures are especially incongruous because the Obama Justice Department is engaged in an unprecedented number of prosecutions of lower-level officials for their disclosures of classified information. An attorney for Stephen Jin-Woo Kim (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/27/AR2010082704602.html), one official under indictment, has said this month that Kim will challenge his indictment (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39693850/ns/us_news-security/) in light of top officials leaking classified material to Woodward. This legal strategy is not likely to succeed. But the optics for the government, to put it mildly, are not good.
Promiscuous leaking also influences the media. Government officials often disclose classified information to journalists to help further some foreign policy goal or for less attractive reasons. This practice makes the media inured to the leaks and disrespectful of security classifications when deciding whether to publish information that the government wants to keep secret. The Woodward disclosures can only confirm the media's skeptical attitude toward the government's secrecy system.
Finally, as the government frequently complains to the media when faced with unwanted leaks, these revelations will dissuade allied intelligence services from cooperating with the United States for fear that it does not keep secrets.
"The hallmark of a truly effective internal security system would be the maximum possible disclosure, recognizing that secrecy can best be preserved only when credibility is truly maintained," Justice Stewart noted. Woodward's book reveals a secrecy system that is truly ineffective, one that massively overclassifies at the same time that it tolerates open and selective leaking from the top about important secrets that is not obviously principled or in the national interest but that does render the system non-credible.

The writer, a professor at Harvard Law School and a member of the Hoover Institution's Task Force on National Security and Law, served as an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration.

onmyknees

12-30-2010, 02:41 AM

http://m.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/greenwald/

Ben...This is required reading for you. Think of it as a journey into your enlightenment. It clearly and factually takes down one of your media heros...Glen Greenwald. As I've told you previously.....be careful who you hitch your wagon to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ben

12-30-2010, 11:40 PM

Quoting Glenn Greenwald: "My motive could not be any clearer or more obvious. Bradley Manning is being incarcerated in extremely oppressive conditions and charged with crimes that could send him to prison for the rest of his life. The DOJ is threatening to do the same with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, based largely on statements they want to extract from Manning.
The chat logs that Wired has but is withholding -- and about which they are refusing to comment -- are newsworthy in the extreme. They cannot but shed substantial light on what really happened here, on the bizarre series of events and claims for which there is little evidence and much cause for doubt. I expect government officials to shield the truth from the public and to conceal key evidence and facts. But those who claim to be journalists should not be aiding in that effort. Wired is doing exactly that."

Ben

12-30-2010, 11:41 PM

Response to Wired's accusations (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_response_1/index.html)

By Glenn Greenwald (http://www.salon.com/author/glenn_greenwald/index.html)

As noted above (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/29/wired_1/index.html), the principal tactic of Wired.com Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen and Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen in responding to my criticisms is to hurl a variety of accusations at me as a means of distracting attention from the issue that matters. Between my June article and the one on Sunday, I've now written more than 9,000 words about Wired's role in the Manning/Lamo case. To accuse me of "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness," they raise a handful of alleged inaccuracies (a) for which there is ample evidenceand (b) which are entirely ancillary to the issues I raised.

I'm going to address each and every one of their accusations in order (their accusations are indented and my responses follow). I realize this is lengthy. But I take the accusations seriously, know that they're false, believe it's incumbent to provide the same accountability and responsiveness I demand of others, and everyone is free to read only those portions which interest them.
Hansen
Tellingly, Greenwald never misses a chance to mention Poulsen’s history as a hacker, events that transpired nearly two decades ago and have absolutely no bearing on the current case. This is nothing more than a despicable smear campaign based on the oldest misdirection in the book: Shoot the messenger.
This is all false. I've actually mentioned Poulsen's hacker past very rarely, and every time I did, it was in connection with substantive questions raised about his relationships to key players in these events, including Lamo and Mark Rasch. I don't think Poulsen's credibility is impaired because he was once a hacker or even a felon. I think it's impaired because he is withholding key evidence and pretending that he and Lamo have nothing more than a standard journalist-source relationship.
Even Greenwald believes this … sometimes. When The New York Times ran an entirely appropriate and well reported profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — discussing his personality and his contentious leadership style — Greenwald railed against the newspaper, terming the reporters “Nixonian henchmen.”
This claim is designed to accuse me of hypocrisy for simultaneously arguing that Assange should not be subjected to scrutiny while demanding full disclosure of the chats. That accusation is made only by wildly distorting what I wrote in the very piece Hansen cites (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/24/assange). My objection to The New York Times smear job on Assange was that by prominently featuring gossipy, personality issues about him on the very day the Iraq War documents were released, the paper distracted attention from what actually mattered: what the documents showed about American behavior in the war (the same reason why Nixon wanted dirt about Ellberg's psychiatric state: to impugn the source of the Pentagon Papers). In fact, I argued the opposite of what Hansen suggests: "None of this is to say that WikiLeaks and Assange shouldn't be subject to scrutiny. Anyone playing a significant role in political life should be, including them."
Moreover, I never argued that Wired should release deeply personal, irrelevant aspects of the chat logs. I argued that they should be much more diligent about making those assessments given that part of what they withheld was not personat at all and, more important, that they should release the portions about which Lamo has made public claims or confirm they do not exist.
Hansen:
Similarly, when Assange complained that journalists were violating his privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden, Greenwald agreed, writing: “Simultaneously advocating government transparency and individual privacy isn’t hypocritical or inconsistent; it’s a key for basic liberty.”
With Manning, Greenwald adopts the polar opposite opinions. “Journalists should be about disclosing facts, not protecting anyone.” This dissonance in his views has only grown in the wake of reports that Manning might be offered a plea deal in exchange for testimony against Assange.
Hansen again wildly distorted what I wrote by taking a Twitter comment and tearing it out of context. I most certainly never "agreed" that "journalists were violating [Assange's] privacy by reporting the details of rape and molestation allegations against him in Sweden," That's a total fabrication. I don't believe that and never said that. Hansen made that up.
Assange was asked in a BBC interview (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9309000/9309320.stm) questions such as "how many women have you slept with?" When Assange refused to answer, many WikiLeaks critics pointed to this as hypocrisy -- oh, see, he doesn't believe in transparency for himself -- and my tweet pointed out the obvious fallacy of that claim: there is nothing inconsistent about demanding transparency for government while insisting upon personal privacy.
Moreover, the question Assange refused to answer -- "how many women have you slept with?" -- is relevant to absolutely nothing of public interest, including the rape accusation. By stark contrast, the information Wired is concealing -- whether Lamo is telling the truth about his various claims -- goes to the heart of one of the most significant political controversies in the world.
Hansen:
Nonetheless, once the Times story — and our explanation — was over a week old, Greenwald sent Poulsen an e-mail inquiring about it, and giving him one day to respond to his questions. He sent that e-mail on Christmas Day.
When we didn’t meet the urgent Yuletide deadline he’d imposed on himself to publish a piece about a 10-day-old newspaper article, he wrote in his column that we “ignored the inquiries,” adding: “This is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth.”
First, not only did I raise most of these issues six months ago (about which Poulsen says "We took the high ground and ignored Greenwald and Salon"), but I loudly re-raised them on my Twitter feed -- from which Hansen quotes -- on Friday, December 24. See here (http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/18376077269270528) ("Read the first 6 paragraphs of this article to see how inexcusable it is for Wired not to release the chat logs it has: http://is.gd/jo29s"), here (http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/18377286092857344) ("Wired Magazine [and the WashPost] possess key evidence on 1 of the year's most important news stories but have concealed it for months") and here (http://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/18378529158725632) ("Fair enough - I mean @KPoulsen: RT @stevesilberman "Do not underestimate the cultural divide between "Wired magazine" and wired.com.").
Second, after trumpeting my intention to raise these issues the day before, I then emailed Poulsen on Saturday morning -- Christmas -- and told him I intended to write about this the following day. When I didn't hear back from him all day Saturday, I waited the entire next day (Sunday) and, in the hopes of getting a reply from Poulsen, still didn't write anything. I only published my piece mid-morning on Monday: two full days after I first emailed Poulsen. Once it was published, Poulsen, despite being "on vacation," certainly responded on Twitter very quickly.
Third, my accusation -- that "this is not the behavior of a journalist seeking to inform the public, but of someone eager, for whatever reasons, to hide the truth" -- was not based exclusively or even primarily on Poulsen's failure to answer my questions; it was based on his six-month-and-counting withholding of key evidence and his failure to confirm or deny all of the serious claims made by his close associate, Adrian Lamo.
Poulsen
To Greenwald, all this makes Lamo “a low-level, inconsequential hacker.” This conclusion is critical to his thesis that Lamo and I have something more than a source-journalist relationship. Greenwald’s theory is that Lamo’s hacks were not newsworthy.
That Lamo's skills as a hacker are "critical" to any issue I've raised is just absurd. In speaking to numerous hackers and others in that community, I repeatedly heard the same thing about Lamo: that his hacking exploits were unsophisticated but designed to achieve the only thing he cares about: press attention for himself. That issue is interesting because it suggests what Lamo's motive might have been for turning government informant on Manning -- an opportunity to get his name in the paper -- but it has little or nothing to do with the ethical issues I raised about Wired and Poulsen.
I detailed with multiple links and documentation in my June article exactly what makes this Lamo-Poulsen relationship so strange. Lamo basically used Poulsen as his personal spokesman for years: he'd hack, and then have Poulsen announce it. When Lamo was involuntarily hospitalized, it was Poulsen he called, so that Wired would write about in the light Lamo wanted. This is how Information Week described the relationship (http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=6502813) all the way back in 2002:
To publicize his work, [Lamo] often tapped ex-hacker-turned-journalist Kevin Poulsen as his go-between: Poulsen contacts the hacked company, alerts it to the break-in, offers Lamo's cooperation, then reports the hack on the SecurityFocus Online Web site, where he's a news editor.
Lamo posts smiling, arms-around-each-other pictures with Poulsen on his Facebook page (http://db.nadim.cc/poulamofb.jpg), including one the day before Wired published excerpts of the chat log. Nadim Kobeissi, Lamo's longtime friend, told me that Lamo has long considered Poulsen his friend. This is anything but some objective, arms-length journalist-source relationship.
Poulsen:
From that bit of sophistry, Greenwald descends into antics that shouldn’t pass muster at any serious news outlet. He bolsters his argument by quoting Jacob Appelbaum as an expert on Lamo. Appelbaum has "known Lamo for years," he writes, and "Lamo’s ‘only concern’ has always been ‘getting publicity for Adrian'."
Nowhere in the article does he disclose that Appelbaum -- the only third-party source in the piece -- is a key WikiLeaks activist: a man who’d shared hotel rooms with Julian Assange, and had already spoken publicly on behalf of the organization. Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April.
The quote from Appelbaum about Lamo's desire for publicity is (a) something that at least ten other people told me in that period and (b) completely ancillary to any points I raised about Wired. I will readily concede that Appelbaum's association with WikiLeaks should have been disclosed. It wasn't for a simple reason: I wasn't aware of it. Poulsen claims that "Appelbaum's key role in the organization has been a published fact since April" but notably links to no news report saying that (only to Appelbaum's Twitter feed). I was unaware -- and still am -- of any news reports before then identifying him as such. If there were any, I didn't see them.
I quoted Appelbaum because his quote was most usable, but I could easily have quoted at least ten other people with knowledge of Lamo to make this same point. Indeed, in a June email he sent me after I wrote that article -- none of which was off the record: indeed, it was all explicitly on the record at his request -- Wired's own Ryan Singel told me: "Lamo is clearly starved for attention. Often he gets it by coming up with odd leads. Here he decided to become a rat, and then went on to brag about it." That quote would have sufficed just as well as the Appelbaum one. That Lamo is pathologically fixated on self-promotion is an article of faith in the hacker world.
Poulsen:
After that glaring omission, Greenwald mischaracterizes my contacts with the companies Lamo hacked. In writing about Lamo’s New York Times hack, Greenwald claims: “When Lamo hacked into the NYT, it was Poulsen who notified the newspaper’s executives on Lamo’s behalf, and then wrote about it afterward.” In truth, I contacted a spokeswoman for the Times, notified her of the intrusion, gave her time to confirm it, and then quoted her in the article.
This is the type of accusation that proves how weak is Poulsen's claim that my articles were filled with a "litany of errors." Read what Poulsen claims I wrote. Then read what he says is the reality. They're the exact same thing. That's one his leading examples of my "errors."
Poulsen:
Nearly half of his article is devoted to a characteristically murky conspiracy theory involving a well-known cybercrime attorney and former Justice Department lawyer named Mark Rasch. Rasch is one of three people that Lamo sought for advice while looking to turn in Bradley Manning.
The blockbuster, stop-the-presses, “incontrovertibly true” disclosure with which Greenwald caps his piece? That Rasch once prosecuted me for hacking the phone company.
Based, apparently, on something he read on a website called GovSecInfo.com, Greenwald announces that "Rasch is also the person who prosecuted Kevin Poulsen back in the mid-1990s and put him in prison for more than three years." (I served five, actually, and all but two months of it was in pretrial custody, held without bail.) He then attacks me for failing to report on this supposed link. "Just on journalistic grounds, this nondisclosure is extraordinary," he claims. . . .
Rasch, who worked for the Justice Department in Washington D.C., left government service in 1991. I had two prosecutors in my phone-hacking case: David Schindler in Los Angeles and Robert Crowe in San Jose, California.
Greenwald, a former law professor, could have learned this in a few seconds on Pacer, the federal court’s public records system. It would have set him back 16 cents, and his article would have been half as long.
First, I was never a "law professor" and never claimed to be one. By Poulsen's reasoning, this grave inaccuracy proves how his response is filled with "a breathtaking mix of sophistry, hypocrisy and journalistic laziness."
Second, my statement that Rasch prosecuted Poulsen is based on far more than "something [I] read on a website called GovSecInfo.com." It is true that Rasch's GovSec biography (http://govsecinfo.com/events/govsec-2011/Speakers/Speaker%20Window.aspx?SpeakerId=%7B05691608-AB54-45B7-B0DE-7372D9F526F0%7D&ID=%7BC18700A9-7318-4903-A591-761265B1D934%7D) does say that he "investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen." But so do other sources. From a 2002 article in Information Week (http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=6502813): "Lamo could face felony charges, says Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime Unit, who prosecuted Poulsen and Mitnick." Rasch's biography for Secure IT Experts (http://www.secureitexperts.com/SecureITExpertsOverview.pdf) similarly states: "Mark investigated and prosecuted the earliest computer crime cases including those of Kevin Poulsen, Kevin Mitnick and Robert T. Morris."
Beyond those sources, Rasch was the head of the DOJ's Computer Crimes Unit until 1991: the year Poulsen was arrested after several years of being a fugitive (http://www.nndb.com/people/453/000022387/) and one of the Government's most-wanted hackers. Rasch was probably not the courtroom attorney litigating the case against Poulsen -- it'd be highly unlikely that he would be -- but it's inconceivable that, as head of the Computer Crimes Unit, he wasn't significantly involved in the investigation of and search for Poulsen and his ultimate arrest, which is presumably why these multiple sources contain the claim that Rasch "investigated" and/or "prosecuted Poulsen."
That the same Mark Rasch then proceeded to have numerous interactions over the years with Poulsen -- and then end up as the person who helped direct Lamo to government authorities to inform on Manning -- is absolutely relevant and is something that should be disclosed when Poulsen writes about this case. If, despite these facts, Rasch actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation of Poulsen, then Poulsen should say so, and if it's true, I'll be the first to rescind this disclosure objection. But my statements were well-grounded in these sources and facts.
Poulsen:
The “regularly contributes to his magazine” part is apparently a reference to this single 2004 opinion piece in Wired magazine.
My claim that he was a "regular contributor" to Wired was based on numerous sources, apparently including Rasch himself. From Rasch's biography on the SCIIP Board of Advisers (http://www.scippinternational.org/security-awareness-advisors.html): "He writes a monthly column in Symantec’s Security Focus online magazine . . . and is a regular contributor to Wired magazine." His biography as a guest on The Charlie Rose Show states (http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/1016) that he "is a regular contributor to 'Wired' magazine." His own prepared biography (http://scippinternational.org/instructors-smes_files/MarkRaschBio.pdf) makes the same claim ("a regular contributor to Wired Magazine"). If Rasch has nothing to do with Wired other than the single article, then there is obviously no disclosure issue, but it also means that someone has been making false claims about Rasch's relationship to that magazine.
I could go on -- the daily, off-the-record conversations Greenwald had with Assange while penning at least one of his anti-Wired screeds; or the fact that he failed to disclose in the body of his first article that he was personally trying to secure a new attorney for Manning while writing the piece.
Poulsen seems to think that it's some sort of secret that I am an active supporter of both WikiLeaks and Manning. Unlike Poulsen, I don't conceal my relationships to subjects or my views of them. That I am a fervent supporter of WikiLeaks and Manning is about the most disclosed fact about me. I've twice encouraged readers to donate money to WikiLeaks, including all the way back in March (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks) when few people had heard of the group. I've also encouraged readers to donate to Manning's defense fund right out in the open on my blog (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning/index.html). I've made repeatedly clear -- by writing it -- that I consider both of their actions heroic.
Poulsen doesn't provide any citation for his grand discovery that I spoke with Assange while writing my piece in June; that's because he presumably knows that because I said it. I often make clear that I communicate with Assange about WikiLeaks matters (from CNN's introduction of me (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1012/27/jkusa.01.html) on Monday night: "Glenn, I'd like to start with you. I know you have spoken to Julian Assange several times"). I don't know where Poulsen gets the idea that my conversations with him were "off-the-record": the reason I didn't quote Assange in my piece on Wired is because he had nothing of relevance to say. Indeed, the only statement of WikiLeaks that I used was its allegation that Poulsen himself acted as government informant -- an accusation I stated in both articles had no evidence to support it.
Honest journalists disclose rather than hide their associations and views. And that's exactly what I've done from the start with both WikiLeaks and Manning.
Finally, we have this:
But by now it should be clear why we don’t seek Greenwald’s advice on a serious matter of journalistic ethics.
Over the years, Wired has repeatedly -- and always approvingly -- cited to, quoted from, and otherwise used my work (http://www.google.com.br/#hl=en&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=546&q=site%3Awired.com+glenn+greenwald&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=9454ca86b8848639). Its reporters, including Ryan Singel and others, have sent emails with lavish praise. After my first article about Wired in June, Singel emailed me to defend Poulsen and contest my objections but wrote: "I've long been a fan of your work and I'll continue to be."
But now that I've written critically about Wired, I'm suddenly converted into a dishonest, ethics-free, unreliable hack. That's par for the course. That's why so few people in this profession are willing to criticize other media outlets. Journalists react as poorly as anyone to public criticism; it doesn't make you popular to do it; it can terminate career opportunities and relationships; it's certain your credibility will be publicly impugned. But journalists need scrutiny and accountability as much as anyone -- especially when, as here, they are shaping public perceptions about a vital story while withholding important information -- and I'd vastly prefer to be the one to provide it even if it means that the targets of the criticism don't like it and lash out.
Ultimately, what determines one's credibility is not the names you get called or the number of people who get angry when you criticize them. What matters is whether the things you say are well-supported and accurate, to correct them if they're not, and to subject yourself to the same accountability and transparency you demand of others.

[B]UPDATE: Poulsen's claim that Rasch has contributed to Wired only a "single 2004 opinion piece" is false. Here are two at least -- here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/view.html) and here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/view.html?pg=2) -- in addition to the close to 40 times (http://www.wired.com/topics/Mark_Rasch) that he has been cited as a source in Wired articles, including -- as I documented in my piece on Sunday -- multiple times by Poulsen and Zetter. That's presumably why he calls himself a "regular contributor" to Wired. And that's all independent of the other forms of interaction over the years Poulsen and Rasch have had. That Poulsen and Wired has this long and varied relationship with the person who put Lamo in touch with federal authorities in order to inform on Manning in certainly something I'd want to know -- and I think the reasonable reader would want to know -- when reading Poulsen write about the Manning case.