Secret Diplomatic Channels. Nice. This is very embarrassing for everyone involved! The 22 year old soldier that leaked this information should be executed because he KNEW what he was doing!
While it is certainly irresponsible for the WikiLeaks people to be publishing these highly sensitive and in some cases very dangerous documents, the real focus here should be on our government and its lack of adequate security over these documents. If the documents had been adequately secured, WikiLeaks would have never been able to obtain them. As a result, the shoddy management of our federal government is to blame here much more so than WikiLeaks is. I find it especially noteworthy that in its article quoted above, the New York Times focuses entirely on the questionable conduct of WikiLeaks and apparently makes no mention at all about the failure of the US government to properly secure and safeguard access to these documents. But of course the NY Times itself will be assisting in the publication of this information over the next few weeks.
Good points Mojo. As one who handled classified documents (though much, much lower level than the ones Wikileaks intends to disseminate) I took an extreme amount of care to insure I handled them properly at all times. I'm not saying there is absolutely no way any of the documents I dealt with could have been compromised, but it would not have happened by my willing complicity or my sloppy conduct. I do believe the leaker should be dealt with in an exceptionally harsh fashion, if the leaks were intentional.
Our government is just a mess and that is one constant no matter who is in the white house. Whether it is a Slam Dunk on WMD's in Iraq or all of these documents not properly secured, our government is just a mess. All the more reason to quit feeding its growth.
AB what good do you think will come? Every country will now look at any exchange with the USA and wonder when it will leak.
Obama has ordered a review of government procedures for safeguarding these sorts of documents in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks dump of 250,000 US government documents. Of course that is a good idea, but the horses are already out of the barn. I would just note that people on the right have been condemning these sorts of releases for a long time and do so regardless of who is holding political office. This sort of conduct, either in the disclosure or the publication of the documents, should not be encouraged under any circumstances. I hope that those people who cheered releases of confidential information during the Bush administration due to purely partisan political considerations will take this opportunity to reconsider that attitude and realize how harmful this sort of thing is for our country and for building and maintaining a climate of international trust and cooperation in the world. The confidentiality of documents related to international security and diplomacy must be diligently protected regardless of who is in office.
It will continue to get more difficult to protect ‘secret’ level data. All of our operations are now controlled using network centric command posts…..even at the company level. Our internal controls to mitigate leakage include a 7 year agency background check, monitoring, signature of a user agreement, and to an extent further compartmentalizing access on the network. Most importantly we rely on the trustworthiness of the individuals we grant access to the network. It is sad that political motivations justify the joy some people find in the fact that an untrustworthy person duplicated secret data and then leaked it to a foreign entity.
at least i now have confirmation on what i already knew but was denied by our government to us...china is cyber attacking us...china and n. korea have tried to send nuclear material to iran to build a bomb...saudi arabia is funding al qaeda and more than likely funneling money through mosques here in the states, its all so fun....
I am surprised at how many MidEast countries are more concerned with Iran than with an Israeli/ Pali solution. It appears Obama chose the wrong angle to ingratiate himself with Mideast leaders. I am not surprised at who seem willing to give a pass to the traitor who leaked all this , rather blaming the US gov't for making it so easy to get. does that same blame hold true for banks who get robbed because they didn't protect their money better or women who go jogging alone and get raped and murdered, cuz they should have known a murderer would be out there? Even though the traitor, manning, would like prison life at first once he has "dated" Big Bubba and Tiny enough times he might wish for a firing squad.
EMan Priv or SPC manning should pray for a civilian court. won't happen BUT why can't we find and arrest or at least stop Assange, the head of Wikileaks? We have known since the first wave of leaks,( This is the third) more and more damaging were out there so is the Gov't trying to say they couldn't find him?
Based on what's been reported....nothing that's come out is particularly surprising. I would describe this as a big "thud".
gecko? Do you think the Saudi leader wants Iran to know he asked the US to bomb Iran's nukes? or that the head of Yemen offered to take blame for US missiles? Or that Slovenia was offered a face to face meeting with Obama if they would take JUST ONE Gitmo detainee? an offer they turned down btw Think any other country will be so open in talks with us now? maybe your idea of damage is different than the diplomatic world's idea
I read/heard that some of the memos revealed that Arab countries were encouraging the U.S. to nuke Iran! Is that because of the whole shiite/sunni disconnect? If true, that might stir up the toilet bowl of the Middle East even more, if that's possible.
I firmly believe that the leaker, (no pun intended), should be subject to the harshest penalties available. He intentionally and knowingly violated the public trust that was placed upon him. (Same goes for Tom DeLay.) However, I have yet to see anything from the 250,000 pages that I find shocking or even in the realm of "Holy Cow!". The Saudis wanted us to stop Iranian nuclear ambitions? (To answer the question above, they asked us to "bomb the nuke facilities", not "nuke the bomb facilities"). I heard that months ago. Our diplomats send personal evaluations on the principals of the countries they are posted to? (Yawn.) The Chinese have been conducting cyber-warfare and facilitating the movement of N. Korean weapons to Iran? Who didn't know that? Seriously? Anyone? It is embarrassing that we allowed some stupid punk to copy all of those communiques, but I haven't seen anything that didn't simply confirm what we already knew. No political assassinations. No outings of high level clandestine operatives. Not much real meat so far. <shrug>
You think Iran didn't already know where the Saudi leader stood...? Do you think the Saudi "man on the street" is friendly toward Iran...? THUD No one thought for one minute Yemen was hitting any targets on their own. THUD The Slovenia thing.....whatever. Its hard to get too worked up by that. THUD The stuff that's emerging now about how much our State Dept people overseas were being asked to gather on their counterparts could end up being the biggest issue. Right now it appears to be a continuation of a policy started under Condi. We shall see.
One thing to consider. Diplomacy is nothing if it is not nuance anyone can " know" something but not have to acknowledge it. That is ultra important in negotiations at that level. Now it has been shoved in everyone's face. The USA has been hurt but other leaders/nations have as well. To pretend this isn't important is to ignore reality in the world of diplomacy/ foreign policy
I heard on NPR that this information is on a government intranet that 2 million people have access to. Maybe the adage "Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead" is a little stern. But you can't have 2 million people with access to these documents without someone stupid, nefarious or confused compromising secrecy. Prosecute the leaker to the fullest extent of the law, but don't put naked pictures of your wife in rented box, give 600 friends a key and then be surprised if you see them on the internet.
I'm now for taking this Wikileaks guy to court. It's one thing to publish unsolicitied secrets others have criminaly or not passed along to you. This is what ABC, CBS and NBC and others have done for decades in the name of a free press. But it is quite another to threaten to expose more in an attempt to deter affected states from prosecuting you. I believe its called blackmail and it appears to be one the very first obvious public signs of corruption or crime this power tripping guy has committed.
A list if facilities vital to US interest has now been published. This could be used as a checklist for aspiring terrorists around the world. From the BBC:
