Leaked Doc May Have Forced US To Speed Up Bin Laden Raid

cf18 writes "Wikileaks released a set of leaked Guantanamo prisoner files to the public last week. Among them is a document dated from 2008, which mentioned both Osama's trusted courier's name and Abbottabad, the city in which Osama had been hiding. There are speculations that, fearing al-Qaida realized their courier may have been tracked and move Osama, the US administration accelerated their plan and attacked the target site over the weekend. This link highlights the relevant section of the document."

Comments

Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[blair1q]

For every improperly classified document they release, they're releasing thousands of things that should be kept secret.

They aren't competent to do what they are doing, and we're not safe as long as they are making these mistakes.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Microlith]

Indeed, it would be better to live in perpetual ignorance. We can trust the Government and Corporations to rule us fairly.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Beerdood]

Perhaps you mean something more on the lines of :

For every 1000 documents of embarrassing diplomatic relations, corporate malevolence, and government secrets, perhaps one or two get out that should have been kept secret. What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[hinesbrad]

I sorta feel like The government is stuffing me from behind and corporate America is forcing my throat by grabbing my ears. All I know for sure is I'm getting screwed and the two seem to be tag teaming me!

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[mpoulton]

For every improperly classified document they release, they're releasing thousands of things that should be kept secret.

They aren't competent to do what they are doing, and we're not safe as long as they are making these mistakes.

We're not safe as long as the government is improperly hiding vast amounts of information, either. The most practical solution would be for the government to adopt a trustworthy approach to secrecy and build the public's confidence in their honesty. If the people could reasonably trust that classified information legitimately needed to be kept secret and was not just hiding misdeeds, there would be no need for Wikileaks and no demand for the revelation of any classified documents. Until then, Wikileaks serves a need.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[vijayiyer]

Exactly.
We will never know how many people were figured out and executed or worse. Worse yet is the impact to our ability to gather human intelligence.
People on Slashdot live in basements. The real world isn't all about free information. Secrets won World War II for the Allies.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Osama was allowed to keep his life secret. You may believe all secrets are bad, Microlith (if that is your real name) but Wikileaks doesn't fix that - it's too random.

Any problem with trusting the government or other organizations comes from a lack of willingness to engage with them. It's not that we don't know what our government is up to, it's that we'd rather just stand on the sidelines shouting about how evil they are than get our hands dirty, get involved with actual decision making and risk making our own mistakes. It's not a question of trust - if you want to have influence, you have to get involved.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[ClioCJS]

What do you mean we will never know? Why would the military hide information that would turn public opinion against wikileaks? You don't seem to understand the politics of the situation very well if you think the military -- enemy of wikileaks -- would protect wikileaks by hiding information about deaths caused by wikileaks.

Gee, Robert Gates doesn't agree with you. ([more analysis]).

You've also failed to point out the fact that the main *innocent* people who die are not our Afghani sympathizers, but american soldiers and Afghan civilians. Want to save american lives? Get the fuck out of afghanistan. It's over.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

USA, Seattle, 33, yes.

Yes, if we discount things like ex-judicial detainment in gitmo as an inconvenient counterargument to rule of law and politicians calling for the summary execution of a non-American for treason for publishing as an inconvenient counterargument for freedom of the press, then yes, the USA is a shining example of a democracy.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Representative democracy requires informed voters to be truly functional and not just a facade for a ruling class. The balance of secrecy works the same as all other balances. It doesn't hover in a perfect middle. It pendulums between two sides with an average hopefully near the middle. Without Wikileaks and others like them there would be nothing to balance the over correction into government secrecy after 9/11. The counterweight used to be the traditional press but they got lost chasing profit with water skiing squirrels and drugged up celebrities.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seattle?

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[blair1q]

You would rather Osama get away to lead more terrorist attacks than that you not know the name of his courier?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[blair1q]

The government pretty sternly told Wikileaks not to release any of them, and why.

Wikileaks ignored them.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[AK Marc]

Empowering people to start revolt isn't blood on the hands of Wikileaks, but blood on the hands of the corrupt governments oppressing their people. Now, if Wikileaks named an informant who was executed for it, then Wikileaks deserves the blame for that. But starting revolutions that result in dead people in the attempts to overthrow corrupt and oppressive governments? That's not a problem. That's a good thing.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[gordo3000]

no, it would be better when national security is at risk that wikileaks grows up and realizes they are endangering lives, and lots of them, by their wanton approach. This isn't a reputable newspaper that tries to make sure they don't cause people to get killed by releasing information, and I'm not talking about the stupid idea of hiding the info because it's unpleasant.

For all we know, we had been using this information to intercept plans and derail them for several years and now with the document out, we had to kill the golden goose of knowing where the enemy leadership was and how they communicated.

and who said this had anything to do with corporations?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[blair1q]

The article is balls.

But the concept is valid.

If Osama knew that the name of this courier was known to al Quaeda's enemies, Osama could have stopped using him and prevented us from following him back. Or simply had him killed to prevent any chance of a linkage. Or determined how he was revealed and killed someone else for it.

Keeping secrets about the enemy keeps your people safe and keeps the enemy's status stable so you can find him and destroy him.

But if Julian Assange feels it's right to reveal these secrets in order that we find out what Hillary Clinton said about Nasser's nose-picking, well, then, let Osama go.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[theArtificial]

You may have a point if the parent is referring to all of the leaked cables. For what it's worth the grand parent was specific:

What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?

Actually, Wikileaks appears to have played a large part in stirring the uprising in Tunisia (cables about corruption), and consequently Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Libya...

So back to that death count...

It appears the Governments there made their own mess. You discount the oppressive people/governments who actually are responsible for their actions thus far. Go back to bed Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen, Syria and Libya.

So about that blaming the victims, not the perpetrators...

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[nedlohs]

It's a guys name, you seriously think based on a single couriers name they can determine exactly where Osama is?

Or are you thinking they'll magically know in 2008 where Osama is because five years earlier some other guy moved to Abbottabad for a year? Clearly Osama must be in that town in a building that didn't even exist when the detainee in question lived there.

The name is what is important. They were clearly tracking the courier mention (given he was there when they raided), if Osama find out that you know about the guy he has moving in and out of his hiding place he's going assume you are at least close to working it out and so move ASAP and get another courier. He survived for almost 10 years with the world's largest military after him and a $25 million bounty on his head - he had to be paranoid...

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Runaway1956]

The question seems to be, "Should Wikileaks be complicit in the corruption, and be quiet, or should Wikileads expose the corruption, even though someone might be killed?"

Obviously our government didn't mind being complicit.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Opportunist]

Do you REALLY think that killing Osama changed anything? Think of it this way: Would killing the President of the US suddenly halt every operation running? Would killing the CEO of any large corporation make it fold and cease to exist?

We're not talking about a handful of loonies with a Bond-villainesque leader and a structure that would crumble when you remove the head. Ozzy has already been replaced, and I guess it's safe to assume that this "devastating blow" didn't change jack. Considering how "prominent" Bin Laden had been, it's quite likely that the day to day "business" was already in the hands of someone else.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[digitig]

This isn't a reputable newspaper that tries to make sure they will increase profits if they cause people to get killed by releasing information

FTFY.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Hartree]

Regardless of ones position on the war, your analysis is pretty questionable.

"Why would the military hide information that would turn public opinion against wikileaks?"

Because it's likely that they would figure out who a mole or agent was from indirect references in the documents. They might be sure enough to eliminate them, but not completely sure, just like the US was unsure about Bin Laden being in Abbottabad.

If suddenly, the US then says "insert-name" has been killed because of wiki-leaks, they know they were right.

It gets even better. If you follow the link in the original post, lots of the people mentioned are only identified by a code number (like ZU 100024 or such). If you suspected ZU 100024 was the person you killed as a mole, but weren't sure, now you know that anywhere else in those documents you see ZU 100024, you know who that is with high certainty.

"You don't seem to understand the politics of the situation very well"

Apparently he understand better than you seem to understand intel analysis.

As to what Gates said, do you really expect the Secretary of Defense to say publicly "Wow, there's a real blockbuster piece of information in those documents."

The Al Qaeda intel people may have missed a big one when they didn't catch on to this. If the US had missed something like that, we'd be talking about a major intelligence failure.

Even if they weren't sure enough to move Bin Laden, they could have raised his security level, or had an escape plan ready.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[blair1q]

Do you REALLY think that killing Osama changed anything?

Yes.

Next stupid question.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[drinkypoo]

Well, you're true to your nickname. Only a right wing nutjob is getting what they want in this day and age.

Get it straight: We have nothing like democracy in this country and I'm not convinced we ever have had. Since Teddy Roosevelt there have been only three presidents who have not been total tools of the status quo, and one of them was only out for himself.

Manning is a patriot, Assange is a useful idiot. However instead of being useful to the power elite, he is useful to all of us.

The only way we will get accountability is when men like Assange and Manning do what they have done.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[drinkypoo]

Your continual Ad Hominem attacks against Manning do nothing to him, but they make you look like an asshole.

Manning was trained to betray his countrymen in the name of serving his country. He instead betrayed his fellow servicemen in the act of serving his nation.

You're pissy because he went against his training, but we should instead discuss whether he did the right thing. There are still no reports of anyone dying because of what he did. But the information he delivered contains reports of wrongful death. He did more good than harm, except to the status quo, which needs harm in the worst way.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[cpu6502]

>>>here in America, we've had it going in more or less working order for several hundred years,

Nothing to brag about really. Rome had a democracy (the Senate) for 500 years, and yet still succumbed to a tyrant (Julius Caesar and his offspring).

The UK democracy (Parliament) is about 200 years older than the american democracy. As for Assange, he serves the original purpose envisioned by the First amendment "freedom of press" clause. The citizens use the power of speech and writing to keep the spotlight on corrupt politicians, in order to keep them from becoming like the 1770s parliament we rebelled against.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[cpu6502]

>>>Wikileaks appears to have played a large part in stirring the uprisings...So back to that death count...

The Declaration of Independence killed about 1 million British citizens, due to the uprising it stirred. Maybe you believe Thomas Jefferson should not have written it, and the US still be a bunch of British colonies? Maybe Thomas Jefferson is as "evil" as Assange for all the trouble he stirred-up?

(I disagree - I think they are of like character. They both believed the people deserve to know.)

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[bsDaemon]

Apple and Birkshire-Hathaway's success is, for better or worse, truer or falser, tied to the leaders of the company in the mind of most investors. If Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet dropped dead tomorrow without having left clear plans for a successor, and having had the markets get used to the idea, I suspect the value would drop out of their stocks in a massive way before recovering.

Killing Bin Laden has changed the political dynamic in the United States. It's given Obama a popularity boost and an improvement in image which he can leverage in his negotiations on domestic policies. It makes it harder to call him "soft on defense" when he's kept up 2 wars, boosted troop levels in Afganistan, and just sent the Navy SEALS into Pakistan, pretty much unannounced, to bust into a house and cap Bin Laden in the face.

Whether or not getting at Bin Laden is going to have any effect in the "war on terror" is irrelevant. In Afganistan, we've been at it with the Taliban this whole time. There hasn't really been much of a foreign Arab-fighter presence there for several years. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are two different things. The spin-off groups in Iraq and Yemen were basically independent entities which used the name Al Qaeda for brand association hoping that believers in Bin Laden would come fight for them. It's basically trademark infringement.

The fact is that killing Bin Laden put the final cap on the whole 9/11 thing for Americans. Bin Laden can no longer be the boogey man hiding in the wings, because he's gone. Any threat that we might face going forward isn't going to come from him. Killing Bin Laden is a lot like the fall of the Soviet Union, in a way. The monolithic face of terror is gone and now the small operators are going to have to come up with their own spin on things. we'll see how this goes. We all know what a disaster letting the Soviet Union collapse was for us.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[arth1]

The real question is not whether you or I, or the next guy thinks killing Osama will accomplish anything. It is whether the general public will think so.

No, the real question is how history will judge this assassination. We are outraged about what he took responsibility for, and likely blinded by it, justifying our blood thirst by having lived through his.
Future generations might not be so biased, and think that the right to a trial is universal and should be stronger protected the more atrocious the acts were, and the surer we are of the guilt.

History might judge this as government sanctioned vigilante justice, which takes away any moral high ground we might have had.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[FlyingGuy]

You are a blithering fucking idiot!!!!

Bin - Laden getting killed made headlines because of who he was.

Deep cover agents / informers don't make headlines when they are taken out back and get a bullet in the head

The problem with people like you is that you just don't fucking get it. There are all sorts of operations going on with peoples lives in the balance, hell their whole families lives in the balance. We got Bin - Laden because of a massive intelligence effort eg: sifting through every shred of everything looking for the smallest clue.

The other side is doing / does the same thing and Manning / Assange gave them EVERYTHING no filter in a nice fully search-able form. NO ONE knows what small bit of info in ALL of that will give away informers, covert agents or operations that have to be shutdown because suddenly they are no longer secret Not ME, not YOU, not that stupid fucking traitor Manning and for GOD DAMN SURE sure not that idiot Assange!

People like you whimpering and whining about this stuff make me want to puke. You want all your little geek toys that consume electricity, you want convenience, you want to get on some sort of transport and go on vacation ( provided you can pry your dumb ass out of your parents basement ) and guess what all of that takes energy. People in the North East want heating oil, people in Arizona want air conditioning and guess what all that energy has to come from someplace. ANWR is not an answer, solar is not an answer, nuclear is completely NIMBY now no matter how or where it is built. Guess where 50% of our energy comes from, wait for it... yes the middle east. Guess what turn off that spigot and we got one big fucking problem.

When the lights go out and your cold and hungry you wont care how the energy is gotten, you will just want your government to go and get it and that is how the world spins.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[guspasho]

Our government can obviously be trusted to never endanger lives through its recklessness.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[guspasho]

> Or are you thinking they'll magically know in 2008 where Osama is because five years earlier some other guy moved to Abbottabad for a year?

They seemed to magically know exactly where he was within a week of the Wikileak being released.

Some people argue that they knew long before and didn't want anyone to know because they were gaining valuable intel. To that I have to ask: why didn't they just perform the raid right away, capture him, gather all his materials, and take down the al Qaeda from the top?

Some people argue that they didn't know anything but what was in the Wikileak and figured everything out in a panicked rush after the leak. To that I have to ask: why did the government fail to do anything with this very important lead for the 2-6 years that they had it?

Some people argue that the government had been meticulously gathering information and was coincidentally very close to capturing him when the leak was released. To that I have to ask: would you like to buy a bridge?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[ScentCone]

but we should instead discuss whether he did the right thing.

He did not do the right thing. He chose to bypass many options available for whistleblowing on his direct knowledge of actual illegality. Of course, all he did was have a big tantrum, and blindly steal hundreds of thousands of documents to demonstrate the "bad place" he was in, emotionally (his words).

He did more good than harm

So, you're willing to cut him some slack because you think he was well-meaning, if clumsy. But you aren't willing to stipulate the same thing about, say, people trying to run a US embassy and delicate relations in Yemen? Or people trying to make the most of having Al Queda captives who know things like the identity of one of Bin Laden's gophers?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Vancorps]

Sorry, where have I been granted more freedom in the last 30 years? Everywhere you look more is being taken away by both the war on drugs and terrorism. Remember times when a warrant was necessary to collect evidence? Remember when you had a right to speedy trial and didn't have to rot in jail for years on end without charge?

I'm amazed that you choose to blind yourself of the politics of the last 30 years and then have the balls to declare someone else deluded. Remember when I couldn't get a DUI for driving while sober? Now adays you can fail a piss test being bone sober and still end up with a DUI because a cop says you drove funny and even though you blow 0.0.

Parent wasn't a brave soul fighting anything, there is a big difference between acknowledging reality and doing something to fix it. Parent also said nothing about being persecuted.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[koxkoxkox]

Maybe you should look up the term, "justice" and see what it's all about.

I will give you a hint, this is not about sending seals to kill a guy in the middle of the night. Justice implies presumption of innocence, trial and conviction, even for the Big Bad Guy.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Rakishi]

Why do left wingers always say that "dissent is patriotic". That's literally an oxymoron."

No, it's not. They're simply not as bloody stupid as you. Neither were the founding fathers. They had few illusions about what governments were and how wrong they could go. The government is a tool of the people, not the other way around. As soon as you think like a fascist, that the state is all that matters, then it's all over. Dissent is how you keep the government in check and ensure that the ideals on which the country was founded persist.

That's what other people understand and you don't.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[Danse]

No, the real question is how history will judge this assassination. We are outraged about what he took responsibility for, and likely blinded by it, justifying our blood thirst by having lived through his. Future generations might not be so biased, and think that the right to a trial is universal and should be stronger protected the more atrocious the acts were, and the surer we are of the guilt.

That's ridiculous. When you gloat about killing 3000 people and promise to kill more, your life is forfeit and you can expect to be dead as soon as those you've attacked get their hands on you. I couldn't care less how history judges it.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[shutdown -p now]

I think the point GP was raising that it would have been more appropriate to capture the guy alive, put him on trial, and then - if (heh) he is found guilty - execute him right and proper. Then it wouldn't have been assassination.

This is not unprecedented - Israel did just that to Eichmann. He was directly responsible for so many deaths of their people that 3000 is chump change in comparison - and yet they felt that capturing him alive and putting them on trial is preferable to covert assassination.

Personally, I don't see how it makes any difference in the end in terms of justice - Osama is clearly guilty, never denied it, and would have gotten the death penalty anyway. But I think that putting him on trial would have been a much more prominent propaganda win than merely killing him.

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[c0mpliant]

You're exactly right, there is a principal involved in this that most people are overlooking. Even before the news broke that Usama was actually unarmed at the time, I found it very suspect that the best trained military team in the world, as the American media is telling us, was unable to capture an individual without killing him. There are any number of non lethal ways to take someone down who is armed with a weapon. But the fact now that they are telling me that he actually wasn't armed and yet they shot him in the head tells me that they were never interested in capturing him alive.

However I am fundamentally opposed to capital punishment. It has shown to not be a detererant, it doesn't bring justice only revenge (the two are not the same thing) and, most importantly in my eyes, the state doesn't have the right to kill anyone where it can be avoided.

I acknowledge that this view isn't the most popular idea right now, but historical trends are showing that capital punishment is becoming less and less acceptable and that is exactly what this was, an untried execution of a person. Whatever way you break it down, the US government acted no differently to a gang in the street

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[IamTheRealMike]

It's not that we don't know what our government is up to

Wait, what? Isn't that the entire point of WikiLeaks - that without leaks we don't know what they're up to?

You realize the recent WikiLeaks dump revealed all kinds of ludicrous "decisions" (using the term loosely) were being made, right?

Re:Still think Wikileaks knows what they're doing?

[shilly]

Um, Israel has also carried out assassinations. The approach chosen depends on many other factors, not least of which is that Eichmann did not have tens of millions of sympathisers around the world who would be motivated to launch repeated terrorist attacks to free him.

Re:Sept 2008 document

[geekoid]

You know its not a game, right? They just don't find a document from one guy and then go kill people.

Re:Sept 2008 document

[Brucelet]

"A courier moved to Abbottabad" is a far cry from "Osama is at 101 Terrorist Way, Abbottabad, and we're confident enough that he'll be there and that we can take him down that we're willing to risk going through with the operation even though he might escape and Pakistan might get annoyed that we violated their sovereignty". Getting from point A to point B takes a little while.

Re:Sept 2008 document

[Anonymous Coward]

The body count proves you wrong.

But, they are only brown babies, so collateral damage, not murder.

fuck the US

Re:Isn't WL supposed to redact....

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're not intelligence analysts - or at least, they're not interested in really clearing these things up.

I'd say that about sums it up. Wikileaks are not really interested in anything but their own agenda with this entire diplomatic cable document dump. They wouldn't know sensitive information if it bit them in the ass. And saying they asked the U.S. Government to help redact any sensitive information is disingenuous. If the U.S. Government had specified concern about any particular documents as being especially sensitive I'm certain there are those at Wikileaks who, rather than withholding those documents, would have been even more intent on releasing them.

Re:Sept 2008 document

[guspasho]

I have a hard time believing the US government, the same one that drops countless bombs on innocents in order to take out low level "militants", would put off an operation for years in order to be 100% sure before it acted. Really, when has it ever dallied on a target for that length of time out of an excess of caution, much less a very slippery and high-value target? The idea is completely absurd.

nope

[obarthelemy]

the doc only states that the detainee moved there in 2003. A couple a lines down it also states he moved away from there a year later.

Basically, it's that randomest and least remarkable mention of the place.