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."

Comments

Re:What classified information?

[gandhi_2]

Just because something classified is leaked doesn't mean it automatically loses its classification.

The requirements for declassification are pretty strict, and few people (relatively) can authorize it. If leaking was all that was necessary, everyone would do it just to avoid the hassle of the classified computer systems.

The government knows you can't get the genie back into the bottle, the cat into the bag, or the National Geographic back into its paper sleeve. They aren't stupid.

At the very least, you are looking at losing your security clearance for looking at stuff beyond your scope of work or security clearance level. This could cost him his job.

As far as criminal prosecution goes, that would be stupid.

I know you guys like to think all info should be open and free but the REAL world doesn't work like that. Countries have secrets.

Re:Whats the problem

[HBI]

Moreover, we were all instructed not to search for, read or refer to the Wikileaks data, as it would be treated as disclosing or misusing classified data. Apparently, this guy can't take a warning seriously.