"But it certainly appears as though there must be far greater collusion between some element(s) of our government and WikiLeaks than a low-echelon enlisted man."

Very good eddo. NYT would not publish the Climategate emails because they said they were stolen, but they are all over this. Also notice how nothing bad is said about Israel so far.  Search "CIA Massad behind WikiLeaks".

endthefed

St. Cloud, MN Times

[Like I said, 'In the absence of answers your conspiracy theory is as good as anyone else's.' -ED]

...The big bugaboo, whether it's in government or industry or any other field (it's not just governments that keep secrets) is in determining what needs to be kept under wraps and, just as importantly, who gets to decide. Surely you will admit that some information has to be held close. On the other hand, I've actually seen classified invitations to parties and I remember thinking, "What the hell?" I'll agree with you that less is best. But getting to that point can be a real mutha. I can guarantee you that someone, somewhere could have made a cogent, coherent argument for classifying that party invitation, probably based on recipient, location, and time. It's just not as easy as you try to make it sound.

oldsquid

Austin, TX American-Statesman

[I don't need to "admit that some information has to be held close." This point is certainly implicit, if not explicit, in my rant. Also, you imply that we disagree about how "easy" it would be to change the rules/procedure/chain of command, etc. while I never suggested remedies. I did state the reason for these problem in just one sentence and stand by my opinion -- with which you don't seem to disagree. -ED]

...Do you notice how Obama had very little to say about this recent WikiLeaks's incident? Did you notice the lackluster way, and the lack of enthusiasm from Eric Holder, involving prosecution or putting out a warrant for this guy's arrest. I believe it is possible that Obama sees this as a positive thing in a step toward one world order. A world with no boundaries, no borders, and no secrets. I do not believe he nor Eric Holder review this as a threat to our country, and/or the safety of our people. I think this could be why nothing was done last time when WikiLeaks made public on their last exposé. I think if one were to take deep enough, we might even find George Soros involved in this. I think this idiot is in the White House believes that this will actually help level the playing field and burn countries together making them talk honestly. I have noticed, however WikiLeaks released nothing involving Russia or China, possibly because he knows he would be dead by now as those countries do not allow weak kneed, gutless, oh dear me type of people. When it comes to national defense and national secrets these people are ruthless, which in my opinion we should be to. Just my thoughts, just my opine, but could it be?

fishinjunky

Great Falls, MT Tribune

...To answer one of the questions, I understand that Amazon provided some of the hosting space for Wikileaks, but they've kicked them off now for fear of the feds. That has led some to call for a boycott of Amazon (those who consider Wikileaks heroes)

Personally, I don't have a problem with digital medical records, as long as nobody but my doc has access to them. What people can do with information changes every day and as the wind blows, so the need to keep them secure is precisely because of what we DON'T know. I also see the point very clearly about the power struggles within the different intelligence organizations, which simply means that we've got too many hands in this pot not wanting to share.

Solution: cut off some of the hands.

vortican

Lansing, MI State Journal 

eddo, I'm still looking for a US govt. bureaucracy that REMAINED within its original scope of intentions and powers rather than expanding like cancer in the lymph system.

The entire pre-release scenario of the wikileaks documents is a clear examples of
Bureaucratic ineptitude
Bureaucratic irresponsibility
Bureaucratic nightmare.

Bureaucrats, albeit, well intentioned as they were, constructed the environment in which this could happen, did happen and will happen again.

As for 'preventing an emergency from becoming a catastrophe, the obvious solution is more bureaucracy, isn't it?

Yeah, let's go ahead and do a job on the little, emotionally immature guy who was put in a situation the bureaucrats constructed and actually made the leaks (and I'm not wholly convinced of his guilt yet) Let's scald him alive, dig up all the dirt we can on him, smear him and ignore the situation and the mechanism of bureaucratic concepts of security that allowed someone like him to have access to Hillary Clinton's plan to embarrass other diplomats.

patrioticcynic

Montgomery, AL Advertiser

Excellent analysis!

Loner1

Palm Springs, CA Desert Sun

The whole world knows that the only secret the U.S. can keep is wherever they put those UFO's they captured at Roswell, or Nevada, or somewhere.

oscartg

Great Falls, MT Tribune

[If aliens land in Arizona they can't be taken into custody until they commit a crime. -ED]

Just think about this. People in the military didn't want gays in their ranks because it could lead to extortion and blackmail. That the additional sexual pressures of a mostly male military wasn't worth allowing gays in the military. And the low level PRIVATE that gave all of these secrets to Assange is gay. And he did it because he was gay.

The simple fact of the matter is this. We have compromised our security in a big way by releasing all of these secrets. Hillary Clinton and Obama look like huge fools. And all of this would have been avoided if we didn't allow gays in the military. All of it!

25or6to4

St. Cloud, MN Times

This problem started with 9/11 when all these separate agencies (FBI,NSA,CIA,Military Intel, etc.) kept their secrets to themselves. Rarely did the FBI know about secrets that the NSA knew, which didn't know CIA's secrets and on and on. All these secrets were compartmentalized when they should of been shared between the intelligence agencies.

So after 9/11 that was changed. Now the different agencies can crosscheck each other...which allows a private to see and copy much more than in the past. In this case a gay, anarchist soldier decided to download much of the information and disseminate it.

Already reforms are taking place. No one can download that much data in the future...and an attempt will set off alarm bells. I am sure the agencies will once again keep some of their intelligence close to the vest, afraid others will release it. Hopefully this soldier spends several years in jail.

Antonious

Austin, TX American-Statesman

600,000 people in government have access to the information that was leaked. This on its face makes the information not secret. What we have is a worthless bloated bureaucratic intelligence system like the rest of our illustrious Gov’t offices. They all make me so proud I could squeal, oink, oink.

oscarthepig

Wausau, WI Daily Herald

[Careful.  Squealing might make people believe you're a whistleblower. -ED]

Dood, you are so full of it. You write:  "In the lead-up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon there were government operatives who actually had a handle on what was being planned by al Qaida. However, due to inter-agency rivalry and power struggles later uncovered by the 9/11 Commission, their potentially life-saving information was never properly conveyed to either the Clinton or Bush White House."  The Clinton Administration knew full what was planned and informed the Bush people about it: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm

As to medical records the easiest thing in the world is to encrypt a local data base. Comparing the possible release of private medical information and the WikiLeaks dump is comparing apples to oranges.

Anonymous

Oregon City, OR

[The comparison is perfectly valid regardless of the nature of the material being web-published in either case.  The problem with medical records

-- encrypted or otherwise -- is that thousands of people have access to them, at best, with the entering of a password.  How old were you, dood,  when the rest of world realized that Bill Clinton is only lying when his eyes are open?  Have you ever heard of Sandy Burglar.  He stuffed some LOC documents in his shorts to prevent the whole truth from being known about the Stainmaker's malfeasances. -ED]

I thought we used to immediately execute treasoners..... what happened??????????

Bearalicious

Palm Springs, CA Desert Sun

Ed, Great read. I'm with Bear on this one.

catmandu

Palm Springs, CA Desert Sun

I'm reminded of the time in the late "20s or early 30"s when Henry Stimson was head of the State Dept. He forbid his employees from listening in on the diplomatic and military traffic because as he said "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail."

glarba

Lafayette, LA Daily Advertiser

[The First Lady of Pants Suits isn't even a gentleman. -ED]

Where is the outrage at this treasonous private who down loaded this sensitive information? He should be court martial-ed for treason and promptly executed! Assange should be also be executed for sedition!

electrondude

St. Cloud, MN Times

Ed the entire thing is beyond comprehension. Why in the world does a military commander in Iraq need to know our Ambassador to Brazil is trying to help Boeing sell Brazil F 18 Fighters. This is of no concern to the local commander.,, there is no need to know, where there is no need to know, there should be no access

One of the charges against Manning is he accessed information he wasn't authorized to access. It defies logic and human nature that you forbid a person to look at something... then leave them alone with complete access to it.

Secretary of Defense Gates has had the job long enough that he should have been aware of the potential. Clearly the same is true of Secretary of State Clinton... They need to go.. Beyond that, Manning is going to need some company for the next 52 years... I think there's some senior staff officers in the State Department and at the Pentagon who've earned the job...

Grumpyelder

Melbourne, FL  Florida Today

It's been extremely noteworthy that the US government is portraying Assange as the "evil power" and treasonous (have to be a citizen of the US to fit that adjective,) individual behind this scandalous release of information, when the government's own lack of responsible oversight and mismanaged security structure is what allowed it to happen in the first place. I have mixed feelings about the releases...on one hand, I admire the idealism behind the recent docu-dumps, which showed the obvious and embarrassing duplicity practiced regularly by our government (and others.)On the other hand, the first releases that were dumped were characterized as having the potential to reveal Afghan HUMINT resources, which could conceivably result in the loss of Afghan and American lives (which I cannot abide by.) Back to the other hand, how would we all have felt about it if those data dumps revealed a plan by the administration to declare martial law in these United States? Might the US populace have suddenly found a brand new hero in Assange, as well as the people who supplied the data to Wikileaks? If this makes the government rethink their security structure, all the better. I would prefer that they operate above board, but we know that will never happen, and in many cases, would legitimately endanger national security.

cohiba

Melbourne, FL  Florida Today