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State Dept. Employee Investigated For Linking To WikiLeaks
New submitter Jimme Blue writes "An employee of the State Department is under investigation and may be fired for 'disclosing classified information.' Or, as others might call it, posting a link to WikiLeaks. 'His crime, he said, was a link he posted on August 25 in a blog post discussing the hypocrisy of recent U.S. actions against Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi. The link went to a 2009 cable about the sale of U.S. military spare parts to Qadaffi through a Portuguese middleman. ... The State Department investigators, he said, demanded to know who had helped him with his blog and told him that every blog post, Facebook post, and tweet by State Department employees had to be pre-cleared by the Department prior to publication."
He wants to be careful he may be the next drone attack victim.
Can anyone honestly pretend that information which has been leaked and posted on the internet still qualifies as classified?
Also, hasn't the Govt. ever heard of the streisand effect?
Just because a classified document is made public doesn't mean it automatically becomes declassified. If this person has a security clearance then he should know that. That is the rule. He had security awareness training on it updated yearly. He signed off on the training each time. It was impressed upon him when applying for his clearance. And if State is like the agency where I work we were given specific instructions about this exact scenario. The summary was "if you have a clearance, don't go there, don't link to it, don't read it, don't talk about it, just plain don't".
Considering he has 23 years in and this is really more of a case of being a sloppy idiot instead of espionage, they should just give him the option of retiring from Federal Service so he can keep his benefits and move on. A deal he can't refuse, so to speak.
He while working for the state department gave credibility and verified leaked classified information in violation of state department policies. The fact that it was already out there in the public domain is irrelevant it has not been declassified.
He may get fired...a bit harsh but perfectly legal.
When you get a security clearance and get told explicitly not to do this.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
People may not like it, but anyone with a US security clearance has a requirement for "prepublication review". That usually applies to talking about your job or things you learned during your job. Since this guy worked for State, and he posted information about state, I think they have a good point. For all any of us know he knew about that Cable from seeing it at work. Just because it has been publicly disclosed does *not* mean it is not still classified. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v41i3a01p.htm http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/prepub/index.shtml
If you don't have a security clearance, then posting such a link may not be a big thing. However, this gentleman did, and every time there is a major Wikileaks release we are reminded that the fact that it's released on Wikileaks does not change a clearance holder's contractual responsibility to protect classified information and that even linking to Wikileaks or talking about it at work could lead to our dismissal - and furthermore, that just because it's available on Wikileaks does not mean the information has been declassified.
Sometimes this is taken to ridiculous extremes - I once went to a public conference where we were informed that all US citizens had to treat a certain presentation as classified information - meanwhile, as a public conference with people attending from all over the world, those other people could do whatever they wanted with the information. It was clearly public knowledge, but US citizens present with clearances had to treat it as classified because the government said it was.
He may not go to jail, but he definitely violated the agreement he made with the government in exchange for his security clearance and will likely lose it. Unfortunately, that's something that will follow him around, and in many industries simply makes you unemployable.
This individual gives his real name and states that he is an employee of the State Department on his blog.
Suppose instead he was a private employee of Firm X and stated so in his postings, and posted something strongly critical of Firm X? Doesn't everyone here expect he would be reprimanded or fired because of his behavior?
I thought the general rule was that if you identify yourself as an employee of Firm X, then anything you say publicly should be consistent with what the management of Firm X would say. That if you wish to criticize Firm X then you do it anonymously.
Can anyone clarify this about general business policies?
You missed the point of the movies. What made the communists evil wasn't that they punished people who violated their rules, but that they would make up phony violations, and then punish without due process.
He probably means this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-reveals-that-mi_n_793816.html
This information about what your taxes are spent on was brought to you by Bradley Manning and wikileaks.
As much as the Gov has drilled into the minds of the public through the media mongers, that Government workers are to stay away from wikileaks. Here comes an idiot complete with a blog. How ignorant can you be? Maybe it is time for him to retire? Meanwhile... "Peter Van Buren, who has worked for the department for 23 years and just published a book that is critical of U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq, said this week that the State Department had launched an investigation against him earlier this month for disclosing classified information."
I believe his troubles began with this book, and the Feds are looking for a way to nail him for being so critical of the USA Government in his book.