Jun 13 2006
More Leaks By State Department To NYTimes
You would think people in government would realize the face serious jail time for leaking to the press. But no, it seems until there are some perp walks to the slammer our national security is at risk due to partisan zealots:
Until now, I refrained from writing about the Somali front in the war on al Qaeda because of its extreme sensitivity and its vital importance. Regrettably, State Department career officials, in order to condemn the program, have now confirmed to the New York Times the existence of the covert operation being run by the CIA station in Nairobi, Kenya. This is an unconscionable breach of security that ought to outrage us all.
The links between Somalia and al Qaeda predate September 11 and unlike the disputed links between al Qaeda and Iraq before the war, these ties are incontestable. The 1998 bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya were carried out through the Somali networks. Since September 11, Somali-linked terrorists have bombed a hotel catering to Israeli tourists in Mombasa, attempted to shoot down an Israeli airliner, have been tied to the London transit bombings and were caught with radioactive contraband in Britain.
…
This creative, risk-taking approach to the Somali problem exemplifies the best of the CIA. It was overseen by a talented CIA station chief with a long history in the region. It was a vital program because the other alternatives are so dire.
…
Every CIA officer knows covert action can be a career killer when operations are exposed or fail. The political fallout and second-guessing has just begun.
Screw the second guessing. Let the investigations begin and pull these Benedict Arnolds out of positions where from they can do more harm.
There is a more subtle example of the harm our media would do. This, ladies and gentlemen is
AN OUTRAGE
This is so 1960s, these traitors never grow up.
King George has had 6 years to start punishing these people.
I am curious as to why he has not.
Time is running out.
I need we had no chance when he failed to prosecute Sandy Berger.
Even the judge had to up the sentence because the prosecutor was to lenient.
My guess is DC is so corrupt and everone has dirt on everyone else and no one has the courage to move.
It’s pretty unclear, isn’t it, just how the NYT’s story placed our national security at risk ? Does anyone here have any kind of real feel for how that supposedly is the case?
Maybe that has something to do with those 900 background security files that the Clintons had sent over from the FBI.
So, how is it exactly, that the NYT’s article puts national security in peril? Does anyone here have a good handle on that?
Illegal activity of any sort is never good.
How much ink will be wasted on Valerie Plame? Where are the relentless stories on the CIA leak cases and the tratorious behavious by the fox guarding the hen-house? Ironic that a honorable long standing civil servant sits in jail and Valerie Plame gets a book deal? There is no better dicotomy to expose the state of ourt ptitful society. The self rightious narcissim makes me gag; we truly are on the other side of greatness. Get beyond the ankle biting jealiousy and we truly must be the laughing stock of the world.
Just listen to the spin coming from the southern border. Troops there – which haven’t yet arrived and will not have guns when they do – are already deterring people? Explain that one to me? Sadly my fellow Americans deserve everything they get from the feckless shapers in the MSM.
DGFX, you asked:
So, how is it exactly, that the NYT’s article puts national security in peril? Does anyone here have a good handle on that?
If you don’t understand that, it wouldn’t do any good to try to tell you.
dgfx,
There are several ways. First, it gives those arrayed against us a view of additional pieces of our defense against them. By exposing some of the methods we are using, it allows them to attempt countermeasures to those methods thereby avoiding detection or surveillance. It can also be worse. They know all the methods they use because they are the ones using them. We have to assume that we are not aware of all the methods they are using or what percentage of them we have discovered. By disclosing details of this nature, we might have tipped our hand on the ONLY method we have of doing something.
To give some examples:
After 9/11 we were tracking Osama bin Laden by his satellite telephone. The Washington Post learned this and published the information. Osama then stopped using his satellite phone. Our enemies are not stupid. They can read. They do read our media. One can not inform the American public without informing our enemies. When a government official is talking to a reporter, it would be well for them to imagine they are talking directly to Osama bin Laden becase they have to assume that Osama will have access to anything told to that reporter. News articles carried in our papers are picked up and carried by wire services such as AP and Reuters. These wire services translate these articles into many different languages and transmit the content around the world. This content is then picked up by regional and local news outlets and broadcast to the people. Folks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq do read newspapers and they do listen to radio and watch TV. There is no such thing as limiting distribution of a story to only the US. When the NYT or WaPo publishes a story, it is to a global audience.
When Murtha speaks about Iraq being “unwinable” and our military “broken” and us needing to come home “now”, what do you suppose is the reaction of the jihadis in Iraq when they read those comments in Arabic in their local paper or hear them on al Jazeera? Might those statements be cause for a boost in morale? Might those comments give the impression that if they just keep fighting a little longer, they can cause America to quit the field before the battle is won?
There are two angles to why stories of this nature are damaging well beyond the domestic political arena. They directly disclose our defenses and allow the enemy to be more efficient in their operations and they give psychological assistance in the form of morale boosting messages to the enemy. While it is clear that the outlets have a domestic political agenda that means a lot to them in that they must do whatever they can to show anything the administration does in a bad light and attempt to sabotage anything we do to counter the terrorists, in so doing they are getting people killed. They don’t seem to care. It doesn’t seem to them to matter how many GIs die or how many Iraqi children are blown up as long as they can continue to beat the drums of their political agenda through their propaganda.
This leads me to one simple conclusion. The people responsible for this do not have children over there in the line of fire because their behavior would be different. In fact, I am beginning to wonder if they have children at all because even if one’s own children are not in the line of fire, most of us can empathize with those who do and would not want to do anything that would risk their safety or extend the duration of their exposure to danger. Those might not be my children directly but in a way they are OUR kids overthere, every single one of every single age and pay grade. They are our kids and it is our responsibility once they are there to see that they are given every possible advantage and protection we can offer them.
To do otherwise is not only treason, it borders on accessory to manslaughter.
I can think of several reasons. First, to bring charges you would be then confirming that what was reported was true. We might not want to either confirm or deny what was written.
Discovery would result in even more being exposed. What are the chances of keeping a reporter silent? What would happen if a reporter served some time, then went outside the country and spilled the beans of what they learned in the trial? Unless they are prepared to execute somone or sentance them to life in prison, I don’t think they would want to risk even a classified trial.
For Enforcement —
If you don’t understand that, it wouldn’t do any good to try to tell you. Now that’s intelligent discourse. My hat’s off to you, sir!
Crosspatch —
I appreciate the detailed and thought-out response, and assuming (for example) your details re: the cell phone thing with bin Laden are right, then I agree that WaPo did a disservice in publishing that info.
My particular question was related to the NYT’s story, tho. Reading that piece, it appeared that most of the information was in the public domain already, and it was and is unclear to me how the additional info which the NYT story included was in fact putting the Nation in peril. As you will recall, the Op-Ed which was the take-off piece for AJ’s posting, simply said something like (oh let me go and find it…) – said
Perhaps I’ve missed something, but the writer of that piece wasn’t any more specific than this, and frankly in reading that I have know way of knowing why he came to the conclusion that he did (“complication . . .”) Indeed, the writer himself did not say that the story emperiled our national security, but that it only “complicated” matters.
A free press will inevitably “complicate” matters. To my way of thinking, the very purpose of insisting on the preservation of a free press is so that matters may be complicated – particularly so that matters may be complicated for those who are in power with respect to the decisions, non-decisions and actions which they make as power-holders — be those in power Republicans, or Democrats or Greens or whoever. Now, on a left-right divide (as I understand the world), that may well place me on the “left”, but on a conservative-liberal divide, I think that on that method of divvying up the world into boxes, the importance of a free press is much more neutral and is neither particularly liberal nor particularly conservative.
I likewise appreciate your point regarding the possible “psychological” boost that “bad news” may have, for the forces of evil (or even (to be less dramatic about it), for one’s enemies or opponents) , but in this regard, I think at least 3 general comments are worthy of consideration: (1) First, as regards the particular story in-question, the possible psychological boost is even more speculative than otherwise might be argued. (2) As a more general matter, the possible psychological boost-factor really must be context-sensitive to the information put out in the public domain, and generalities are pretty near speculative-beyond-comment. (3) Any “psychological boost factor” analysis is inherently rather speculative.
Now, addressing the “Murtha example”, you are possibly right that his statement that the war is “unwinnable” (by us – as I understand his position, it is that if the war is going to be won, it must be won by the Iraqis themselves, and our presence at the present time does not further the winning of the war and only depletes our treasury and shed’s precious American blood) could conceivably give “pyschological comfort” to the “jihadis” to hold out. Murtha is challenging the policy of the current administration and that challenge might conceivably have collateral effects concerning 3d parties. But to say that such comments “might conceivably” have an effect on 3d parties does not mean that that is likely the case – and given that such expressions by Murtha have not garnered virtually any support even among his fellows on his side of the aisle (much less the other), it is unlikely that the “intelligent jihadi” places much stock in what Murtha does or does not say. (And, of course, we must caution ourselves about making policy or decisions upon how whatever idiot that is out there might react (e.g., “the unintelligent jihadi”))
Secondly, I expect that as a general matter, the insurgents in Iraq are much more attuned to and motivated by their perception of what is going on in Iraq — both actions etc. undertaken by the Iraqi governments and those undertaken by coalition forces — than by US politics.
Third, even if Murtha’s views were held (and were given voice to) by more folks in political power (Democrat or Republican), the very bedrock of a free press and a free democratic system of government — even in times of war (and perhaps especially in times of war) — is that there be a debate and a free expression of views. It’s bedrock. It’s that simple. That’s the nature of republican democracy. That’s how nations like the US, and Britain, and Japan, and Spain (and yes, even France) differ from places like Saddamite Iraq, or (in great part) Egypt, Saudi Araibia, China, Iran. The expression of such views, may of course, have unintended “collateral damage.” “Collateral damage” sometimes is unavoidable.
They are our kids and it is our responsibility once they are there to see that they are given every possible advantage and protection we can offer them. I agree as an abstract statement, but within context (as all things must be), we do not in fact give them every advantage and protection if we turn our backs on what well may be the reason that they joined and went to serve in the first place — the protection of the United States. The United States is not simply a bunch of people or a simply a land mass, but rather is its people living under a set of fundamental principles.
— Regards
[Sorry for not closing that “i”; wish there were a preview; hope this does it]
For anyone who’s on-thread now (about 3 pm Eastern), you can catch a portion of the House’s present debate on the War in Iraq (scheduled by the Republicans, as I recall), on CSPAN – via cable on on the net.
— Regards