US Intelligence Planned To Destroy WikiLeaks 555
An anonymous reader writes "This document is a classified (SECRET/NOFORN), 32-page US counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks (PDF). 'The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the US government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out.' It concocts a plan to fatally marginalize the organization. Since WikiLeaks uses 'trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers,' the report recommends 'The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.' [As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective.] As an odd justification for the plan, the report claims that 'Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website.' The report provides further justification by enumerating embarrassing stories broken by WikiLeaks — US equipment expenditure in Iraq, probable US violations of the Chemical Warfare Convention Treaty in Iraq, the battle over the Iraqi town of Fallujah and human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay."
Re:Should there be ANY government secrets? (Score:2, Informative)
Majority of things I've heard about that were leaked, were only classified to avoid embarrassment and prevent protests against things people disagree with.
Can't speak for your experience on the matter, but in my experience, if government had things it's way, FOIA would not exist, and everything would be kept a secret until no one who can suffer consequences for their actions involved with something are long gone.
You hit the nail on the head (Score:3, Informative)
And not only that, in free and democratic societies, individuals deciding on their own to leak classified information is a subversion of that very democratic process. In the US, we have collectively decided, as a society, that some information should be kept secret, even from The People, and we have empowered and entrusted the government with the power to do so.
When an individual, on his or her own, decides that some secret information should be leaked, they subvert that process. It is nowhere near akin to leaking sensitive information from totalitarian or repressive regimes, or even from corporate entities.
Some might assert that information is overclassified, or classified such as to hide wrongdoing or illegal or questionably behavior. Fine, but:
1. You don't get to make that determination yourself, and
2. If you do, generally this kind of decision is a moral one which must be tempered with consequences. I.e., if, in a free and democratic society, you really believe that a piece of classified information should be released, you should be willing to pay your society's consequences for it. People leak to WikiLeaks because they believe (mostly accurately) that there will be no consequences. This creates an unhealthy environment for any kind of protected or sensitive information in a democratic society.
Your own personal view on whether something should or shouldn't be classified is irrelevant. There are well-known and established processes that govern classification.
Just about the only thing WikiLeaks believes should be protected from leaking is negative information about WikiLeaks itself [fas.org].
Re:Should there be ANY government secrets? (Score:1, Informative)
Wikileaks is also a criminal enterprise for distributing, encouraging the distribution of, and conspiring to distribute classified documents.
Anyone in the United States who works for or supports Wikileaks is guilty of a federal offense, just like the leakers, and if convicted, eligible to be sentenced to upto 10 years in federal prison.
Re:Be aware... (Score:4, Informative)
This information is marked SECRET and NOFORN (i.e. not for export or foreign eyes); simply accessing it without a security clearance may be committing a crime against national security.
If you don't have a security clearance, then you don't have any obligation regarding classified information, and you don't even need to understand whether you are authorized to view a SECRET/NOFORN document.
The burden of protecting and properly handling classified information belongs to those with a clearance.
Re:Tyranny hates freedom (Score:3, Informative)
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
And just as there are some things that the government should NOT be allowed to keep secret, for example the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment [infoplease.com].
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
Tax information about specific persons.
Operation strategies and plans during warfare
Certain security procedures
The exact location and strength of military assets
Procedures for arming/deploying certain weapons
Just to name a few.
Re:An easier plan (Score:4, Informative)
The best plan would be to embrace Wikileaks as a valuable informant so that the bad guys could be rooted out of government, but of course that option won't even be considered. (Now, what might that say about the ones doing the considering....)
Re:Two can play your game (Score:1, Informative)
Prove the above with references from reputable, neutral sources.
Prove a negative? How about you prove the positive: show us one terrorist whose attack was foiled by torture. I'd limit it to reputable, neutral sources but since our country seems to hate having any kind of public trial where we show our evidence that so-and-so is a terrorist etc, I'll let you cite whatever crackpots who have a gut feeling that some guy MUST have been stopped because nothing blew up in the last 30 seconds and every 30 seconds a terrorist tries to blow up all of America.
Re:An easier plan (Score:1, Informative)
We're talking about the most powerful, most expensive government AND world empire (with military bases in some 150 countries) that has ever existed.
Of course they have plenty to hide. You simply cannot build an organization so ridiculously enormous amid the proper informed consent of everyone who pays for it.
Re:Two can play your game (Score:1, Informative)
Just for the heck of it:
Newsflash: There hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, after which terrorists were captured and tortured for information.
You should read this [wikipedia.org] before continuing your line of reasoning.
There have been terrorist attacks planned since 9/11, and so far all of them have been stopped before they could be executed. None of the information that led to these attacks being thwarted was obtained through torture.
Re:An easier plan (Score:3, Informative)
That why it's not just a an anonymous BBS. If someone were to try to post say the blueprint and guard shifts at a nuclear generator, it will be stopped. That is something that has little civic interest but enormous defense interest.
Problem is to many feds try to act like 'defense' is a get out of jail free card for EVERYTHING. Any waste. Any pet project. Any friend in need. How often this happens may never be known, but at least we can keep the scammers looking over their shoulder. If they get too arrogant, they disgust a report and BAM, busted.
Re:Two can play your game (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Be aware... (Score:3, Informative)
You've got it backwards. It is not a crime to see a classified document if you aren't cleared for that level of classification. It is a crime to show somebody a classified document who isn't cleared to see it, however.
Re:Serves a Useful Purpose (Score:4, Informative)
You refer to this [wikipedia.org] section of the Wikipedia article on State Secrets Privilege.
Re:Two can play your game (Score:5, Informative)
A more realistic statement is that people will tell everything they know to prevent $BAD_THING from happening, and once they run out of the truth, they will start making things up.
And how will you know the difference? You won't. If you're intelligence gathering is so bad you have to rely on torture, you don't belong in the intelligence business.
Re:An easier plan (Score:5, Informative)
The US Congress [is] elected by the general population.
Yes, but in name only. The general population doesn't get to decide who they vote for or against. They only pick from among the short list of candidates vetted by unelected entities.
Perhaps if there would exist an unelected federal entity such that would create legislative frameworks for the states. Would that be an unelected congress, perhaps?
You mean like the Federal Reserve? Or the Department of (Concept)?
Re:An easier plan (Score:3, Informative)
It made the news recently [telegraph.co.uk], of course not everyone buys it [discovermagazine.com].
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
While technically correct, it is largely misleading to make that claim. The justice department report (http://documents.propublica.org/justice-department-report-on-waterboarding-memos#p=1) clearly covers how the waterboarding used to torture prisoners and the waterboarding used to train special ops to resist torture vary. In case you don't feel like digging through the 289 pages though I will highlight the major differences.
The training method uses a small amount of water applied to a cloth over the prone soldiers face for around 20 seconds. The torture method uses extremely large quantities of saline (because when the used water the amount they swallowed started killing them by extreme electrolyte imbalances) poured over a inclined prisoners cloth covered face for 40 seconds. Now if you can't see how being oxygen deprived for 20 seconds and oxygen deprived and have the sensation of drowning for 40 seconds differ, lets move on.
The training method was NEVER applied more than twice and typically only once. The 'approved' torture method allowed for 6 'pours' of 40 seconds each during a 2-hour session where the prisoner remained strapped to a gurney with his head down. But the good news is that they were only allowed to do this twice per day, except for the extra 4 minutes of supplemental drowning they could add in if they needed. The guidelines allowed them to shackle the prisoner to the roof for up to seven days before waterboarding them, causing extreme discomfort and keeping them awake the entire time, but of course Club Gitmo's spoiled little jihadi's got hand-fed and diapered while they were chained up. Between waterboarding sessions they could look forward to enjoyable pasttimes like being placed in stress positions, being stuffed into a small box, being thrown against the wall, or having hypothermia induced by being doused with ice water.
There are also adorable guidelines on having medics standing by so that prisoners could be pushed close to death without quite going over, and to resuscitate them if those naughty terrorists have the audacity to die on them. Information on keeping them on a liquid diet so that it was less dangerous when they would breath in their own vomit. It reads remarkably similar to a guide on human experimentation that you would expect from the Nazi's.
Remember as well that this was just the 'approved' method. If all those recordings hadn't gotten 'accidentally' destroyed we might know what actually happened and whether it went beyond approved methods. Regardless I can't concieve of how anyone could consider what was done to be 'not torture'.