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US Intelligence Planned To Destroy WikiLeaks
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."
Wouldn't an easier plan to destroy the credibility of wikileaks be to overflow it with bogus leaks and fake whistleblowers, flooding them with misinformation?
"As two years have passed since the date of the report, with no WikiLeaks' source exposed, it appears that this plan was ineffective" Or much more likely never implemented. There are hundreds of people paid to come up with ideas for fixing solutions in just about every govt org. By design these ideas are suppose to be a free thinking as possible while staying within the guidelines of the problem. In this case someone came up with an idea to deal with the leak problem by destroying the org that posted the leaks. This could have been a very potent fix, but also brought out the possibility of blow-back (public outcry, legal action, extra exposure of data, etc) as well as just pushing the problem off to another newer site that is even harder to deal with (Like shutting down Napster or Kazaa). It seems to me there is a good chance that they choose not to directly attack WikiLeaks and instead worked on keeping data from getting out to begin with (Can't get the data that's out back, so just keep them from getting more).
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
They are demanding a budget significantly larger than Wikipedia's was just a few years ago... for a site that gets 1/1000th of the traffic. They could never hope to fight the legal battles directly with any amount of money, the only solution for materials with serious legal force behind them will be freenet.
Meanwhile, Cryptome trucks on as they have since damn near the beginning of the internet. They'll send you a DVD set of their content for _free_ if you ask.
Only on slashdot would a statement so legally invalid as this be considered "informative."
What torture? Fucking pansy. Smash a testicle with a hammer and when the victim regains consciousness tell him what he needs to do to keep the other one. OH NOES! WE DIDN'T GET A PRAYER RUG IN THE PATTERN WE DEMANDED. Guantanamo exists because our soldiers were prevented from correctly disposing of the enemy in the field.
Guantanamo exists because we lacked the backbone to follow the standards that we claim to uphold.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
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'.