With 77,000 revelatory Afghanistan documents now having floated their way

through the screening process of the American media, and the newly released
nearly 400,000 Iraq war documents now spotlighting the behavior of American
and Iraqi military and police criminal activity, it appears appropriate to question
the benefits versus the costs of making such documents available for public
consumption.
The fear that sensitive intelligence information regarding Afghanistan is largely
eliminated as reported by Danger Room when it said that, “Gates wrote to Carl
Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that a preliminary
Pentagon review ’has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and
methods compromised’ by WikiLeaks July release of 77,000 ‘tactical’ military
reports from Afghanistan.”
There are many reasons why one, either in Afghanistan or Iraq, would choose to
be an information source. Whether for reasons of money or emotionally based,
once having elected to engage in this activity, there must be recognition that to
do so is inherently dangerous. The chances of capture, torture, family retribution
and death increase exponentially once this choice is made.
Exposure by military record leakage is only one of a number of ways that one
can expect to be discovered. Thus, while document handlers may well have been
careless or over quick in the release of the documents, the added risk they
impose on information sources appears either minimal, or completely
unpredictable. Yet, the unknown possibility of enhanced threat levels to
information sources appears a major concern for some of the WikiLeaks
employees.
Wired’s Threat Level says that:
“Key members of WikiLeaks were angered to learn last
month that Assange had secretly provided media outlets
with embargoed access to the vast database, under an
arrangement similar to the one WikiLeaks made with
three newspapers that released documents from the
Afghanistan war in July. WikiLeaks set to release the
Iraq trove on Oct. 18, according to ex-staffers — far too
early, in the view of some of them, to properly redact the
names of U.S. collaborators and informants in Iraq.”
Given available research regarding American willingness or capability to engage
in complex reading, it is a reasonable hypothesis to assume few are likely to
read the entirety of the New York Times’ presentation of its interpretation of the
findings contained therein. As the only American paper with full access to the
reports, it’s average daily readership is only a little over 95,000. Even if every
one of those readers spends the time to read the full report, this is a tiny fraction
of the adult U. S. population;
Fewer (if any measureable number at all) will actually read a significant fraction
of the available raw data.. Those few who do are extremely unlikely to have the
remotest effect on any U.S. policy decision.
Since President Obama took office, he has undoubtedly had much revealed
including the contents of these stolen documents. He was provided ample
opportunity to investigate and prosecute members of the Bush administration if
he had an interest in doing so. He has repeatedly made it clear he has no plans
to prosecute Bush, Cheney, or any other members of the Bush administration for
any reason. There is no reason to expect the distribution of these documents will
change this policy.
Few news stories make it past a few days of diminishing attention. Any affect is
further muted by the fact that the release of these documents come at the height
of midterm elections. If interest in the story lasts for more than a week, it will be
surprising.
However, the breach of security of which this is only one of far too many, is an
issue which deserves far greater scrutiny than has been directed to it, thus far.
Since the year 2000, there have been tens if not hundreds of breaches of
security of major proportion. It’s not as if we do not know what they are.
Surpassing by far any other breach of security was the 9/11 attack on the interior
homeland of the United States. Not only were there 3,000 direct victims of the
attack itselfand the resulting deaths and illnesses of the first responders coming
to the aid of those trapped within me Trade Center buildings, but the two wars
which were the direct result of that attack, have left the country with thousands of
young Americans dead and injured, with our soaring national deficit a direct
consequence of the attack.
On September 6, 2006 Fox News provided a useful summary of the 9/11
Commission findings which enumerated many of the failures which ultimately led
to our vulnerability to this attack. Here are just a few of the major findings.
Readers are encouraged to read the full list which is available from this link.
• Leaders failed to understand the gravity of the threat from Usama bin
Laden and his Al Qaeda network. Terrorism was not the overriding national
security concern for the U.S. government under the administrations of either
President Bill Clinton or President Bush before the Sept. 11 attacks.
• Before Sept. 11, 2001, the United States tried to solve the Al Qaeda problem
with the capabilities it had used in the last stages of the Cold War and its
immediate aftermath. These capabilities were insufficient.
• The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of agents
in the field to national priorities, and other domestic agencies deferred to the
FBI. Federal Aviation Administration capabilities were weak. The CIA had
minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own personnel
and needed to improve intelligence collection from human agents.
• The U.S. government did not find a way to pool intelligence and use it to
guide planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations involving
entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the military
and the agencies involved in homeland security.
• Starting in 1997, the U.S. government tried without success to use diplomatic
pressure to persuade Afghanistan's Taliban regime to stop sheltering Al
Qaeda and to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice.
• There was a lack of military options, which military officials blamed on a
dearth of actionable intelligence, to strike at bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
The failure to prevent 9/11 is symptomatic of a much larger problem. What it
comes down to is that the Department of Homeland Security has huge gaps in its
ability to protect the nation from many sources of attack. Whether it is the
uncounted crossing of criminals, pedophiles, and terrorists (potentially moving
fissile materials) over unprotected hundreds of miles of both borders,
unauthorized transfer of nuclear weapons by Air Force personnel, or the recent
deadly shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, there has been a repeated demonstration
of the inadequacy of the protection of all Americans.
The theft and distribution of the WikiLeaks documents is symptomatic of the
degree to which both military and civilian computer networks are, “soft targets,”
for those determined to engage in the kind of cyber attacks on both military and
civilian networks, which could paralyze his country for days or months. Those
who applaud this kind of criminal action have little or no understanding of the
severity of the activities which they support.