US Government Strategy To Prevent Leaks Is Leaked

Jake writes "The US government's 11-page document on how to get various US government agencies to prevent future leaks has been leaked. It doesn't get any more ironic than that. After the various leaks made by WikiLeaks, the US government understandably wants to limit the number of potential leaks, but their strategy apparently isn't implemented yet. It's clear that the Obama administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive steps to prevent further leaks. According to the document, these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness. The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have."

Comments

Whats next

[Drivintin]

I think next they should try reverse psychology. Works well with me 5 year old.

Re:Whats next

[Anonymous Coward]

fine, DON'T try reverse psychology.

Re:Whats next

[neokushan]

Your ideas and opinions intrigue me, I would like to hear more from you.

Re:Whats next

[fractoid]

Hah, screw you, I'm gonna use reverse psychology WHATEVER YOU SAY! HAHAH- wait. :(

The PDf of the document

[Ndkchk]

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/OMB_Wiki_memo.pdf

Ironic?

[hardtofindanick]

Encryption algorithms are also public, that doesn't mean they won't work.

Re:Ironic?

[oodaloop]

And I'm listening to Alanis Morissette right now. How ironic is that?

Re:Ironic?

[timeOday]

It's not ironic. If you look at the PDF of the document itself, every page of the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified, it's not even Official Use Only, from scanning the document I didn't see anything indicating anybody was supposed to restrict its circulation.

If anything, it bothers me a little that techspot is treating this as a coup (it's not even on MSNBC's front page), since there's no reason this document should be kept secret, and thus it should not be, since the policy may affect many people and should therefore be a matter of public discussion. The default in government should be openness, not secrecy.

Re:Ironic?

[Shemmie]

A little too ironic...and, yeah, I really do think...

Re:Ironic?

[c6gunner]

That's perfect. You're listening to a song called "ironic", in which nothing is actually ironic, while responding to an article which misuses the word "ironic".

Re:Ironic?

[teachknowlegy]

Are we really this dumb as a society? It's *supposed* to be public. Either it is intended to work while still publicly disclosed or it's a decoy. Of course it could be a test, someone could have forgotten to classify it, or any number of other things could have happened. Just because it is stated that it's to prevent leaks, doesn't mean they want to prevent it from being leaked. Our leaders are often smarter than you give them credit for (and yes, they are often dumber, too).

Re:Ironic?

[TheRaven64]

the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified

I'm not sure about the US system, but in the UK unclassified and not classified are not the same thing at all. I believe this is the same on both sides of the pond.

Re:Ironic?

[John Hasler]

If a document is not classified it is unclassified by definition and can be subject to a FOIA request. It is also not illegal for a government employee to release such a document (though doing so to the embarassment of one's boss could be a career-limiting move).

Re:Ironic?

[Yvanhoe]

A colleague who used to work for defense contractors once told me this interesting trick : If you have a boring document that you need every employee to read, instead of just handling it to them, make it secret and give them clearance. That will make them more curious and everybody will read it. Maybe here is a similar strategy : "leak" a document stating how to prevent leaks, and more people will read it than if you just publish it on a governmental website.

Re:Ironic?

[countertrolling]

...it bothers me a little that techspot is treating this as a coup...

Try to understand the advertisers mind. It's hype. Every press release is a "leak", every publication an "exclusive". Sounds more dramatic, right? Fires everybody up. Makes them forget about the hand reaching in their crotch and grabbing their goodies.

Re:Ironic?

[demonlapin]

"It's not ironic. It just sucks." -Lawrence Stephen Witkos, 1976-1998. RIP.

Re:Ironic?

[fluffy99]

the policy is marked top and bottom with "Unclassified." It's not classified

I'm not sure about the US system, but in the UK unclassified and not classified are not the same thing at all. I believe this is the same on both sides of the pond.

You would be wrong. Unclassified and not classified mean the same thing in both countries. The US , UK and most of the EU aligned their classification categories quite some time back to facilitate information sharing. Although the UK uses slightly different terms for some things, the categories are the same. Also note that the terms "Restricted" or "For-Official-Use-Only" are not classification levels, they are caveats (ie an additional handling restriction).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information

Re:Ironic?

[mmalove]

Wow, maybe they could classify the constitution and then leak it. Would do a world of good.

Re:Ironic?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

A colleague who used to work for defense contractors once told me this interesting trick : If you have a boring document that you need every employee to read, instead of just handling it to them, make it secret and give them clearance. That will make them more curious and everybody will read it.

Your colleague was a liar. Anyone with a clearance knows that 99.999% of classified documents are snore-inducing borefests. To someone with a clearance, getting yet another classified document is just more hassle and is to be avoided if at all possible.

National Security

[Anonymous Coward]

This all makes sense. Because simply reporting any media contact isn't a violation of any of their basic human rights. It's perfectly reasonable that who they talk to be monitored, and all government employees should be subjected to regular mental health screening. They have to make sure these people are the right type and not some crackpots who will leak information that the government doesn't want its people to know.

Silly that anyone would write an article about this, as if it shouldn't be common practice anyhow. They should just go ahead and make these things mandatory for the entire populace!

I Wouldn't Worry

[CheeseburgerBrown]

I'm sure that if anyone were falsely accused of being a leaker, they would no doubt have swift access to just recourse. This is the West, after all.

If someone ends up in a such a situation and reports the contrary, their testimony is likely tainted because they are a dirty rotten leaker.

Ultimately, we are all safer somehow.

This is going to backfire

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait. This is going to backfire. Federal employees are going to resent being treated as suspected criminals and probably will react negatively to the profiling and suspicion.

Re:This is going to backfire

[jc42]

During the Cold War it was standard to brief military and government employees to be wary of espionage attempts and trust no one.

Yeah, and people generally went along with it. But there's a major difference between that and the current issue. Back then, there was a real foreign enemy trying to harm us. Today, the purported enemy is just ordinary citizens who are trying to expose their own government's corruption to its own voters. I suspect that a large part of our population understands this. The government employees, who see the corruption first hand, certainly do.

(Well, OK, in the case of wikileaks, it's mostly citizens of other countries. But those people and their governments aren't at war with us; they're just trying to tell us about our own government's corruption.)

The people hired...

[gstrickler]

...to stop the leaks after the first leaks, have just been sacked. The leaks will now be stopped in a new, and completely different fashion.

Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Teancum]

I love knowing how America keeps creeping to become more and more like the Soviet Union with a similar kind of loss of privileges.

Where the debate really needs to be centered is on two things:

• What items ought to be kept secret?
• Does the federal bureaucracy really need to be so big in the first place?

By far and away too much is classified material. I don't mind having things like the locations of military units and certain other generally time-sensitive information being classified, but there certainly is a whole bunch of stuff being labeled as classified material mainly because it would be embarrassing if the information was disclosed. That stuff should not be protected under an official secrets act and I wish that a harder evaluation would result in trying to decide what exactly should be considered classified material in the first place.

Speculating that the King of Saudi Arabia is an ass should not be considered an official secret.

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[peragrin]

yes the federal bureaucracy does need to be it's size. It has to manage 300 million people of conflicting ideals, ideology, desires,etc.

What most people forget, is that the majority of the laws on the books are there because someone abused someone else, and we seek to prevent it from happening again.

Common Sense isn't really that common.

And yes speculation that the king of Saudis arabia is an ass should be kept secret. Your official position is that he is a good king, you can't contradict that view point without you yourself looking like an ass. Unless he does it himself first. How many secrets about your friends do you keep?In any given circle of friends you have that one who you let come along even though very few actually like them. Gossip like that is needed to understand the person behind the power. Such understanding is far beyond your abilities though.

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Artifakt]

Classification was originally evolved for military intelligence. Do military intelligence right, and you report only on capabilities, not intentions, opinions, or personalities. A proper MI report describes what assets and liabilities Saudi Arabia has, and stays away from speculating about whether the King or anyone else will use them a certain way. Civilian oversight decides whether someone is an enemy and will use their military assets to attack, not the military (at least that's the way it's supposed to be in the US). If a trained observer notes that the Saudis are selectively putting crews to work at sites that produce lower grade crude oil, that might actually be classified secret, if only to make it harder for the Saudis to figure out who the person generating the report is. But that report shouldn't speculate about why the Saudis might be selectively marketing their lower grade crude and conserving their top grade, let alone go into the observer's opinion of the King's personality.
Part of the problem here is that civilian persons, including both diplomatic personnel and decision makers, are using the classification system that is only built to work for military intelligence and only built to work if the m.i. process is done right up to the time the decision to classify is made. The civil oversight is using classification to cover their asses, and they go to that mode easily because they're already misunderstanding how classification should work just by thinking it will work for the kind of stuff they put in a report.

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[bws111]

US foreign policy is not "the king is an ass". The opinion of an employee of the US government is that the king is an ass. Or aren't those people allowed to have opinions?

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Thing 1]

No, I think the majority of the laws on the books are because some rich people wanted to further abuse the peasants. Look at marijuana law, it was enacted to prop up the forests of William Randolph Hurst. Another angle, they restricted the right to vote from felons, and then made a whole bunch of innocuous acts into felonies. Read the book "Three Felonies a Day", which talks about exactly that; the average citizen commits three felonies a day because the laws are so vaguely written. I disagree with the premise, and I also disagree that the federal government needs to be so large. Or exist at all. I wonder how the EU member states' citizens feel about their (relatively) new overlord?

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Teancum]

There are whistleblower laws that have been enacted precisely because it is important from time to time to not only encourage but also protect people who may want to publicly offer an opinion contrary to official policy. This is also a dangerous and slippery slope where you get examples such as what happened during the late 19th Century in America where employers would make employment conditional upon how you voted in the most recent election. If you voted for the "wrong" political candidate, you would lose your job.

There are most certainly limits to how far an entity can limit your opinions, and the only real restriction is mostly upon the officers of a corporation at best. As they also set policy, it is sort of hard for them to express an opinion contrary to that policy too.

There can and should be differences between "sensitive" information and something covered by an official secret. My point in raising the issue of a government employee saying that "the king of Saudi Arabia is an ass" is that shouldn't be "an official secret". It should be kept as sensitive material so far as it would likely be expressed as a private communication.... but revealing that information shouldn't be the moral equivalent of treason and have the death penalty attached. That is a whole different situation compared to somebody leaking the source code for a missile guidance system that can land a 100 kg bomb 1000 km from the launch location to within a centimeter of the intended target. If you can't tell the difference in which ought to be a secret and which is merely embarrassing, I'm at a loss to help you here.

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Teancum]

Typically the largest employer in most municipalities is the local school district, often followed closely by other government agencies of various kinds. The total work force in the U.S. that is employed by the government at some level is about 40% based upon some studies I've seen, and in the UK that number is a bit more than 60%.

In 1900, the largest department of the U.S. federal government was the Post Office Department with about 200,000 workers, followed by the predecessors to the Border Patrol and customs agents. The War Department usually averaged between 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, and the Navy Department a little bit more than the Army but not too much more. The USMC was usually about the size of a regiment for most of its history... except in times of war.

If the federal government remained about that size, or returned to that size at the end of World War II, the number of secrets that would be needed for a bureaucracy that size would have been minimal. If America was able to thrive and survive for more than a century with essentially no significant government bureaucracy, why is one needed now? I'm saying that one of the problems with why leaks are so prevalent is precisely because there are too many people who need to keep secrets from the general public.

Re:Perhaps they should study the KGB?

[Teancum]

The U.S. government had a much, much smaller profile for most of its history. Stating that the size of the government is strictly a function the number of people that "it represents" is a gross mischaracterization of the issues involved. In the 1920s, when America was already a "large empire" already industrialized with electronic communications and possessing most of the attributes of a "1st world nation", it had about a half million employees in total. Why is 100 times that number needed now.... because we have 100 times the population?

As for the Great Depression, it was horrible mismanagement on the part of the Federal Government trying to intervene into the situation under the Hoover administration that caused most of the problems, and the Roosevelt administration trying to cover up those mistakes by making many more of them. The recession of 1921 certainly could have been duplicated in 1930 with perhaps a little bit of pain for the major banks and the political elite, but the country as a whole would have been much better off as a result. It didn't take growing the federal government and instituting socialism to restore economic prosperity and I would argue that it got in the way of the economic recovery... just as similar policies today are getting in the way.

The problem with the current recession is mostly because the bankers who got stuck with the bad debt due to the housing bubble don't want to lose their shirts over a lousy investment... and want the rest of America to bail them out on what should have been an insanely risky investment. A big ouch where housing prices got back to more sane levels and a temporary deflationary period would have been over by now had the big central banks simply been allowed to collapse. The politics involved are mainly to protect those who made a bad judgment call.

More to the point, I'm arguing here that the size of the government bureaucracy is contributing to the problem of leaks by requiring many more "secrets" when more of what they are doing ought to be done by private industry or charity groups in the first place. Let people keep their own money and spend it as they best see fit and not have how that money needs to be spent by some central bureaucracy that knows jack.

Here is another suggestion...

[SerpentMage]

How about the United States do a house cleaning on their policies? And how about the United States go back to what the constitution was all about? Maybe then you would not need to worry about this crap! Oh wait that's too simple and all of the agencies would be out of a job. Can't have that now can we!

Re:Here is another suggestion...

[laughingcoyote]

You don't have to lie in those scenarios.

You never tell another person "good to see you", when you really don't care?

Then you just say "Hi, how are you doing?" Still a perfectly polite greeting, and you've told no lies.

You never say "I don't care" when someone asks if you have a preference for lunch, even though you do care?

If they're asking me, they apparently want my opinion. Why would I not then give it? If they want something different, I'll usually go along with it, but you shouldn't ask questions you don't want the answer for.

You never give a person a false compliment just to brighten their day a little?

No. If they need picked up a little, I'll give them a real one. I've never known a person with no good qualities at all. And really, people do tend to know when you're shitting them around like that. If you want to give them a compliment, pick a genuinely good quality they possess, or something they've recently done well, and compliment them for that.

I would tend to expect the same of our diplomats. They need to be candid, sure. But they can do that by, say, dispassionately reporting the facts and leaving the high school type jabs out oft it entirely. And if what you really are doing would embarrass you if it came to light, there's an easy solution to that—don't do those things. The government could well learn from that. If the actions they're undertaking in our name wouldn't be supported by us if we knew about them, and would be embarrassing because they're unacceptable, why are they doing those things in the first place?

The problem here is not that certain inappropriate actions of the government came to light. The problem is that they ever took place at all.

Re:That's not irony!

[RichardJenkins]

Isn't irony ("Situational irony" as Wikipedia calls it seems to be what most folks mean when they say it) when the opposite of what you expect to happen happens? For example, if I implemented a set of policies to prevent leaks and then those policies caused a leak - very ironic. That's not what happened here, what is the irony in this situation?

the amount of classified information is astounding

[nblender]

I do some work for a military contractor and the sheer amount of classified information that's flying around is simply beyond astounding... A lot of things that are banal and boring are marked Top Secret in order to prevent sub-contractors from hiring foreign workers... It's not that the information itself is or needs to be Top Secret but marking it so is a way to keep jobs local...

Wikileaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikileaks does not 'leak' anything. They report leaks.

How about

[unity100]

not doing things that would hang heavy on the conscience of people, causing them to leak stuff ? not betraying them ? not misusing their trust ?

then the need for finding 'trustworthy' people who would have to go through security audits, psychiatrists, sociologists, would be at a minimum.

we are not the age of empires in which dumb lackeys blindly do whatever they are ordered to. people of this age, have conscience compared to the dark ages. you wont be able to make them do evil shit, and then keep their mouth shut, if there is a way for them to blow the whistle.

but maybe the problem in the recruitment strategy. touting being a democracy that protects freedom, you recruit people to that cause, with patriotic lines. then, they discover that, what they do actually go against what they had had joined the force for .... basically, they are being deceived with shallow excuses and justifications.

only dumb enough people would buy bullshit. the rest, will leak, regardless of whether you employ armies of psychiatrists, or not.

Re:How about

[cold fjord]

I've long thought military recruitment strategies were targeted at lesser brains...

Your views are uninformed. The American military is on average better educated than the population.

Who Serves in the U.S. Military? The Demographics of Enlisted Troops and Officers
American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor's degree.

Re:How about

[rubypossum]

I think you're confusing education and intelligence. It is the informed opinion of a large segment of the population that joining the military is a stupid thing to do. Not simply uninformed, we're talking about room temperature intelligence quotient. Therefore you would expect a great deal of stupid people in the military. The fact that these stupid people get free college is irrelevant.

Although I want to say that I don't necessarily believe everyone in the military is stupid. On the contrary, it seems like they start out stupid and leave being some of the best human beings I've ever met.

Unclassified document

[__aaqvdr516]

From Wikipedia (which agrees with my military background)
Unclassified
Technically not a classification level, but is used for government documents that do not have a classification listed above. Such documents can sometimes be viewed by those without security clearance.

This document is at the same level as a menu from the kitchen of the White House. Show me documents with Noforn or better and then I'll be concerned.

They just don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

...post-WikiLeaks environment.

Because this sort of thing never happened before WikiLeaks? This just shows that all their security responses are purely reactive and never pro-active, just like the TSA. The threats have always existed, it just goes to show that whoever has been doing risk analysis for these agencies have been completely clueless and still doesn't get it. Although, if anything, by trying to fix the causes and just blaming Wikileaks there is the benefit of at least getting a stronger system which is why I agree with what Wikileaks did.

The Irony Overwhelms

[Jawnn]

From the summary...
"...these steps include figuring out which employees might be most inclined to leak classified documents, by using psychiatrists and sociologists to assess their trustworthiness. "

McCarthy, Stalin, and Mao would all be proud. Those who do not, fundamentally, "think right", will be treated... differently. Never mind the fact that screening of the type were talking about here has a dismal record at predicting behavior. It was designed to predict pathology. The two are, believe it or not, rather different things.

Re:The Irony Overwhelms

[Peeteriz]

Is it reasonable to restrict people because the doctor/ideological officer says that they might break that oath because they are expressing unhappiness about work conditions or managment?
Thoughtcrimes, anyone?

elephant in the room

[conspirator57]

or perhaps the number one thing the government could do to prevent leaks in future would be to... i don't know... *NOT DO ILLEGAL SHIT* or, and i know i'm way off base, *NOT SUBVERT ITS OWN IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY*

But, sadly James Earl Jones already played the US Government:

Whistler: "I want peace on earth and goodwill toward men."
Bernard Abbott: "We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing."

Re:elephant in the room

[satch89450]

I would go a little farther. The voters of the United States has been promised transparency in government. If the USG kept the promise, there would be nothing to leak. Furthermore, with the sheer amount of information that such transparency would generate, we would instantly be in information overload, so the risk of people actually seeing something embarrassing would be reduced.

Remember the movie Class Action? "We ask for a couple of things, and the other side sends the Library of Congress. There must be something there they don't want us to find."

Re:elephant in the room

[ZankerH]

Two of the nastiest regimes ever to run countries are facing off over eastern Europe. Which one do you support?

The one that didn't declare war on the USA. If neither did, don't get involved in the war.
We don't HAVE TO police the world, you know.

Re:elephant in the room

[Teancum]

I hate to break the news, but America was involved in World War II as early as 1940. The problem was that the entire U.S. Army consisted of about 30,000 soldiers mostly stationed in the "colonies" of America (the Philippines primarily, although in a few other places too) and of course in a few training bases. Instead, like what Wilson did during World War I, America became the "arsenal of democracy" and all that other BS while Roosevelt tried to build up the armed forces of America. Airmen from America were openly encouraged to join the Royal Air Force to develop some necessary skills (normally that forces you to renounce your citizenship... accepting a position in the officer corps of another country).

By 1941 America was supplying most of the raw materials (steel, grain, and other stuff) to the UK to help fight off Nazi Germany. There were of course indigenous industries in the UK as well, but it was more than a mere supplement to those resources, and Liberty Ship production. At its peak about three ships of this class were launched each day. That is an insane amount of metal, not to mention the contents of those ships was rather large too.

As to if America ought to have been involved to that extent, that is certainly something debatable. The debate about going into World War II was something that was extensive and there certainly were many opinions about the topic well before December 1941. This is a debate that I wish had happened prior to going into Iraq, where I believe a formal declaration of war should have happened... with the territory acquired to become sovereign territory of the USA. If America wasn't prepared to do something that raw, it shouldn't have gone into there in the first place. Ditto for Afghanistan and I dare say Vietnam as well.

Re:elephant in the room

[TheTurtlesMoves]

And you don't understand how this turns out *every time*. It never works for the better... EVER.

"Peace in our time," sums up diplomacy better than anything.

Re:elephant in the room

[ipwndk]

How was communism the vehicle that allowed Hitler to gain power? By being an opposition he could use to sway his people to Fascism? I also doubt the US communist party would want to install a Mussolini, as Mussolini was a fascist and fought communism just as Hitler fought communism. (Communists was executed together with Jews and political opponents in the fascist regimes) But Hitler was a great threat, and he would no doubt take USA if he could.

Re:elephant in the room

[nagnamer]

I dont want to hear about the war, or about whatever other issues you may have with the government-- what crimes were specifically exposed by the embassy wire leak?

First of all, you wouldn't know much about the crimes if you live in the States. Many crimes committed by the US gov't against other smaller countries were well-revealed by the leaked cables, and there are more to come, I'm sure.

If you live in the States, you should know of the other fundamental principle that justifies the leaks:

1. The right to access information held by public authorities is a fundamental human right subject to a strict regime of exceptions. The right to access to information protects the right of every person to access public information and to know what governments are doing on their behalf. It is a right that has received particular attention from the international community, given its importance to the consolidation, functioning and preservation of democratic regimes. Without the protection of this right, it is impossible for citizens to know the truth, demand accountability and fully exercise their right to political participation. National authorities should take active steps to ensure the principle of maximum transparency, address the culture of secrecy that still prevails in many countries and increase the amount of information subject to routine disclosure.

more here

You can't leak something that's not a secret

[Anonymous Coward]

This document is CLEARLY marked UNCLASSIFIED.

Not FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (not for public consumption).
Not SECRET ( would cause "serious damage" to national security)
Not TOP SECRET ( would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security)

This is a non story.

Those responsible...

[JaySSSS]

for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

Re:the amount of classified information is astound

[alvinrod]

Can't the armed forces make rules that subcontracted work cannot be exported out of the country? It's the same effect with less insanity. Hell, even if something like this needed congressional approval or a law of some sort, it's not as though it would be difficult to get it passed.

Flaws

[Andy Smith]

"using psychiatrists and sociologists"

They must be 100% accurate, 100% of the time, or their advice is worthless.

"agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media"

Maybe, just maybe, the person that leaks something will come up with a way around this rule. Like not reporting the contact.

Find/Replace on the McCarthyism Protocol?

[DontScotty]

Just do a Find/Replace on the McCarthyism Protocol? "McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence."

Investigations to find those "most inclined to leak classified documents" -

Ooo! Then we can make a BLACKLIST of those people, keep them from working!

10 History
20 Learn Lesson
30 Forget Lesson
40 GOTO 10

Meaning, of course, "Leaks that aren't Deliberate"

[rbrander]

At the height of the Just-Shoot-Assange media circus, Glenn Greenwald pointed out that the New York Times had just spilled the most forbidden, unlawful, immoral, unforgivable secrets of all, on it's front page: imminent troop movements.

Assange, of course, was being treated as if he'd sent countless troops and allies to their deaths with his leaks, even though the Pentagon disagreed that anybody had been hurt, whenever they were asked. (A few Afghan supporter's names had failed to be redacted in an earlier release of the "war logs"; Wikileaks corrected its processes, and fortunately, there's no news of any of those Afghans being attacked, even verbally.)

The NYT piece - about upcoming covert action in Pakistan - generated no comment of that sort whatsoever. How can that be?

Well, the Pentagon, the ground commanders, the Administration, Congressmen - not one of them said a thing. And why not?

Because it wasn't a "leak": it was a press release that didn't come with any follow-up questions allowed, or any accountability for the plan, the statement, or the subsequent action: completely anonymous.

All the benefits of a leak and none of the downside.

"Sauce for the Goose" would require EVERY leak to be followed up with a serious investigation by impartial detectives, and summary dismissal, at minimum, for the leaker. They would prefer, of course, to have complete control of the information and the ability to use it for any reason - public-serving or just partisan advantage - that they wish. Ask Val Wilson.

Re:elephant in the room -- MOD PARENT UP!

[drdanny_orig]

Mod parent up, please. Why is this glaringly obvious solution NEVER discussed?

It's an unclassified document.

[mrmeval]

It's not even marked FOYO, For Official Use Only. I don't see where it was leaked other than the howler monkeys at MSNBC saying it is.

Is wikileaks "news media"?

[jc42]

The memo also suggests that agencies require all their employees to report any contacts with members of the news media they may have.

But they've been telling us all along that the wikileaks folks don't qualify as "journalists" and don't deserve the legal protections that most democracies give to "news media". Employees in contact with such online information sources can easily think that such requirements don't apply, since they've been specifically told that such organizations aren't news media.

Maybe they should think of a better way of expressing what they want their employees to do. Or stop the pretense that, since there are no printing presses involved, people working on informing the public online don't qualify for legal protections such as the US's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press.

Re:That's not irony!

[PieSquared]

If it actually *caused* a leak, then yes. If it just didn't work, then no.

Someone being convinced to wear a bullet proof vest by a loved one who feared for their safety, and then getting shot in an area it didn't protect isn't irony. Someone being convinced to wear a bullet proof vest by a loved one who feared for their safety, and then drowning because their vest weighed them down is irony.

And in any case, the "leaked" document is very clearly marked "not classified".

Re:Trashy

[HungryHobo]

"giving the impression that the government doesn't know what the government is doing"

I think you've hit the nail on the head right there.

Re:elephant in the room -- MOD PARENT UP!

[Tikkun]

Because the conventional wisdom in DC is that the CIA, the State Department and the rest of the government needs to be able to do quasi legal things in order to function.

Re:the amount of classified information is astound

[cold fjord]

A lot of things that are banal and boring are marked Top Secret in order to prevent sub-contractors from hiring foreign workers... It's not that the information itself is or needs to be Top Secret but marking it so is a way to keep jobs local...

Nonsense. A lot of things labeled Top Secret are banal and boring because much of the day to day project work most people do is banal and boring even if it is top secret and involves technology, and has to be protected against disclosure due to the possible damage to national security. Project plans, status reports, engineering reports, budget updates, progress reviews, test reports, system design - none of them are exciting, but are necessary, and have to be protected if the purpose of the project is to be protected. If the purpose of developing a top secret device or process is to give your country a competitive advantage in some manner, such as war fighting, it doesn't make sense to have knowledge of the existence, cost, size, scope, or technical details compromised by employing a cheap typing service in some third world country, does it?

In any event, American law allows employment restrictions based on citizenship where national security is involved, it doesn't take a security classification to do that. (Bummer, eh?)

It's hard enough just dealing with American citizens.

Re:Trashy

[tsm_sf]

Why should the US government be any different than the rest of the world?

Re:elephant in the room -- MOD PARENT UP!

[Grishnakh]

Because fascists and other authoritarians believe that bad (and illegal) things must be done by the government to keep society functioning well.

Interestingly, in the USA, both Democrats and Republicans fit this description, as well as most of the people who vote for them.

Re:elephant in the room -- MOD PARENT UP!

[conspirator57]

like covering up the apache killings of the journalists in Iraq when all the government really had to do was admit that a mistake had been made in a war zone?

i guarantee you that if our government's actions were less continually ignoble there would be many fewer leaks across the board.

The only irony

[Phaid]

is that the person who thought they were being clever by labeling this a "leak" didn't notice it was an unclassified memo sent to the heads of public agencies.

Re:elephant in the room -- MOD PARENT UP!

[sumdumass]

I would say there never was a watchdog press.

What there is was competition between participants in the press. They worked to scoop their competition and gain market share. It was a constant battle between them and being the first to get the dirt that everyone cared about (their government) meant sales. When all the papers and magazines started becoming conglomerations and getting their news from news service agencies, they only need a presence in an area.

The internet is sort of the same way now. The blogs were the people saying look at me, come to me, then when everyone had a blog and started pulling all their information from other people's blogs, we end up with a bunch of opinions about something already known.

But you could hardly call wikileaks a watchdog journalism. I would probably be hard pressed to even call it journalism at all. You see, there is not story behind the information. There is nothing completing it like you would get with great journalism. There's very little who what when, there is no why or how, and in the end, all you have is a piece of information that isn't anything major for the most part, even if all that was there.

As for the swayed by logic, perhaps I didn't get my point across after 2 posts. A lot of the information is in no way news worthy at all. It's just the discrete and confidential communications between some unprofessional people playing the role of diplomat or soldier. and while there is no bearing on anything illegal in those, there are elements that can be used to harm the US and the interests of the US. I mean seriously, is it illegal for a country to ask us to go to war with another over their nuclear weapons programs? Even if we decided against it?

The question was "Why is this glaringly obvious solution NEVER discussed?" and that answer is, because the largest portion of the leaks had nothing at all to do with *DO ILLEGAL SHIT* or *NOT SUBVERT ITS OWN IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY*. They could however, be in turned used against the US or it's allies in it's perfectly legitimate dealings around the world and at home. They could be used to defeat our efforts in wars that we are currently fighting. When you have 99% of the leaks overshadowing the less then 1% that pointed to something underhanded or illegal, even if you stretch those to include opinions on instances where it's not clear, you end up with people focusing on the nothing to see here leaks that can be used against us.

In other words, the glaringly obvious thing for most people is to stop the leaks. So a reporter got shot in a mistaken incident and they kept it quiet, now that it's in the open, it changes nothing. He's no less dead, to anyone familiar with combat, the copter crew, while not in the right, definitely did nothing criminal because they didn't know they were wrong until after the fact. So it out, we know about it now, nothing's different, except for all the other crap is out too. And that seems to be taking center stage.