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US Intelligence Community Has Lost Credibility Due To Leaks (bloomberg.com)
Two anonymous readers and Mi share an article: U.K. police investigating the Manchester terror attack say they have stopped sharing information with the U.S. after a series of leaks that have so angered the British government that Prime Minister Therese May wants to discuss them with President Donald Trump during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Brussels. What can Trump tell her, though? The leaks drive him nuts, too. Since the beginning of this century, the U.S. intelligence services and their clients have acted as if they wanted the world to know they couldn't guarantee the confidentiality of any information that falls into their hands. At this point, the culture of leaks is not just a menace to intelligence-sharing allies. It's a threat to the intelligence community's credibility. [...] If this history has taught the U.S. intelligence community anything, it's that leaking classified information isn't particularly dangerous and those who do it largely enjoy impunity. Manning spent seven years in prison (though she'd been sentenced to 35), but Snowden, Assange, Petraeus, the unknown Chinese mole, the people who stole the hacking tools and the army of recent anonymous leakers, many of whom probably still work for U.S. intelligence agencies, have escaped any kind of meaningful punishment. President Donald Trump has just now announced that the administration would "get to the bottom" of leaks. In a statement, he said: "The alleged leaks coming out of government agencies are deeply troubling. These leaks have been going on for a long time and my Administration will get to the bottom of this. The leaks of sensitive information pose a grave threat to our national security. I am asking the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no relationship we cherish more than the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.
If there's one thing we can all look forward to under the Trump administration it is the strangling and dismantlement of our intelligence community.
You know, apart from exile or being confined to a single building for multiple years on end. I mean apart from that nothing too serious.
Keeping his mouth shut when entertaining the Russians in the Oval Office?
Distraction news that doesn't matter.
WTF?
What would meaningful punishment look like in the case of Snowden, for example?
Sometimes you need to vote for a president based on qualifications, like you're looking to hire someone. Not just where they stand on issues.
Petraeus shared the information with a lover and a biographer — there was never even an accusation, he wanted or was prepared to overlook it being accessed by an enemy.
The hypothetical Chinese mole may well be an actual Chinese, working for his country. Assange is not an American and owes us little loyalty.
But Manning, who harmed his country to impress a boyfriend, and Snowden, who did it for some "greater good" (which never materialized), were traitors. The sooner we stop glorifying the two assholes, the sooner the healing will begin.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Intelligence agencies have lost credibility by lying all the time. It's no wonder there are leakers like Snowden: no self-aware person would feel confident following the leadership in the NSA or CIA or FBI.
Let's be honest though: there has never been a time in history when the CIA or FBI were particularly competent.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Agencies release information for very specific reason. Likewise, when they withhold it. Someone, or some group, is invariably the target for the trickle trickle oopsies.
With Trump blurting out "I'm not saying we got our intelligence from Israel, but: Israel" and "Oh and we got some nuke subs over there, look how tough I am", there are leaks at the top as well.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
President Donald Trump has just now announced that the administration would "get to the bottom" of leaks. In a statement, he said:
Its not the bottom you need to be looking at... its the top.
Something isn't right here. As suggested above, other counties could stop sharing information with the US if the Leaker in Chief continues his activities. It's not clear that not sharing information would be a bad thing for the US, but who knows?
I know, right? What has breaking of Enigma ever done for us?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We spend a lot of time and money making ourselves believe we are morally superior. Then when believers make it into the ranks of organizations that are the strong arm of the US government, they suddenly see the evidence that we aren't morally superior at all. We are bullies, using our superior weapons to bully other nations into favoring western business. Some can't deal with this reality, and try to right the wrongs. Or at least, that's how I think this keeps happening. But it's the plight of leadership. The other dogs are constantly looking for advantage, and nipping at your heals. You have to smack them down or lose your position. That also means taking food from betas to maintain your strength. I'm not saying it's right, but it's the reality.
U.S. citizens should be far more concerned about what was leaked than the fact that there were leaks. The leaks clearly show our government is out of control, spying on us citizens without cause.
No, this spying did not start with either Trump or Obama. It might have started with one of the Bushes, or it might have started even earlier. Whenever it started, it should stop.
However, Trump want this spying to continue. That is the real reason for his focus on ending the leaks.
Using the surveillance state to unmask political enemies for the purposes of harassment, and in Seth Rich's case, murder.
The war on terror has taken a toll on the moral of the troops. The legal shenanigans breaking the trust of the public will continue eating the respect of the institutions until the cause is fixed. Fixing the cause requires amount of courage that is unattainable by the elected politicians who like to stay in the office and the whole judiciary branch of the government. One unjust police action requires thirteen just police actions to compensate by the ancient wisdom of marketing.
His name was Seth Rich
Is the only ship that leaks from the top.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Leaks are an essential part of how the US government works. The White House uses them, Congress uses them, the military, the CIA, NSA, etc. It's an aspect of bureaucratic infighting. "Leaks" will never stop because no one who says they want them to actually wants them to. They want EVERYBODY ELSE to stop.
So, if I have this right, when they were leaking information about the executive branch on a daily basis to the press, that was cool... but now that they're leaking information to the press about terrorism, that's bad.
Howabout we call it all bad. That's not how bureaucrats should pay back the government they work for.
Also, how is it that the federal government can monitor its citizenry ala The Patriot Act, but it can't even figure out who's leaking classified information to the press?
This article lost all credibility soon as it referred to Manning as she. If you are born with a dick, your pronoun is he and that won't ever change. This is the starting of a demented society who instead of rejecting mental illness caters to it.
The Five Eyes intelligence alliance is a group of Anglophone countries which operate under a treaty for joint cooperation in signals intelligence. Effectively neutralizing leaks, which are a thing of the past, since both the United States and United Kingdom are both members of the Five Eyes alliance.
The leadership of the intelligence community has been using their authorized secrecy to do terrible, evil things, and cover it all up.
The low-level functionaries that must facilitate this evil are mostly ordinary people with something of a moral backbone. They aren't paid nearly enough to sell their souls, and feel an obligation to protect the people whom they purportedly serve from all the evil that their bosses are perpetuating.
So, the culture of evil leadership has created the culture of perfidious employees.
If they want the leaks to stop, the must either:
1) cut all their employees in for a much large slice of the pie (everyone who touches anything secret gets a 0.5 million dollar a year salary, to start). Buy their silence.
2) Clean up their act, so people stop feeling morally obligated to leak information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martians,_Go_Home
That's what the world needs.
For the same reason all government agencies are leaking secret information, the DOJ's investigation will FAIL.
Our government of bureaucrats is taking our government away from our elected officials. So much for our democracy. The goddamned Demoncraps have taken it away from us.
I think a country that drops a couple of atom bombs on civilian population in a terror bombing (1945) doesn't deserve much credibility.
I've always found the phrase "as a society" to be something awkward, when spoken by, or about, the really big things in the news, wars, terrorism and such, and although we are all on planet Earth, I would never be considered to be a part of "your" society, when those words are spoken by the powers that be, because it should be obvious that such people can't be trusted, and so pandering to this idea that some government agency or the entire military of a nation is "society" is grossly disgusting to me.
As far as intelligence communities goes, they might have literally raped the privacy of billions of people the last half a century, so I frankly don't care for this idea of the intelligence community having credibility as such. The word 'credibility' would only come to mean some kind of positive buzzword. I shouldn't have to mention Obama's admission that "We tortured some folks." So, "credibility" is imo some populist bs term, select labeling for either soliciting or simply stating, by themselves, the worth of their own's self importance.
The story isn't that leaks are happening. The story is that there are people that want to leak the information.
If you don't want people to leak the information, threatening them with punish won't work. You need to take the high road. People need to know that they are keeping the secrets for the right reason and they WILL NOT leak the information. TLAs.... are you listening? Take a look at your approval rating internally and externally and decide whether or not you are really doing things correctly.
Ya think the Chinese and Russians and North Koreans don't know that we have nuclear subs in the area? Seriously, how naive are you. Also, when multiple news outlets have already leaked that the supposedly oh so secret information that radical muslims are trying to use electronics to blow up shit came from Israel and how damaging the leak is to our relationship with Israel, do you really think that Trump saying 'I never said Israel' is what tipped our adversaries off that it was Israel?
The partisan press and bureaucrats who are out to get Trump are playing a dangerous and illegal game. The collatoral damage they are causing may never be known. Now they are leaking photos of on-going investigations into terror attacks and I can't think of what justification they are using for this. It's not partisan or patriotic in the least and if there is some quid-pro-quo between leaker and newspaper, then both need to be jailed.
... and yet leaking is almost never punished, much less prosecuted.
If you want to see why, look at one of the few cases of leaking that *was* prosecuted: Scooter Libby's leaking of the fact Valerie Plame was an active CIA agent. Note that his sentence was commuted by the president he served.
That's because despite leaking being characterized as disloyal, often it's the exact opposite. I'm not just talking about planted information, I'm talking about leaks that arise out of internal differences in strategy and policy. The insiders who do this aren't trying to sabotage the administration, they're trying to steer it using public pressure. And while embarrassment is often part of that pressure, leaks by insiders are usually carefully measured to limit damage. And given the infrequency with which they are punished I have to assume that insider are also careful about choosing their battles.
What's coming out of the Trump Administration feels different, more disloyal, and gratuitously embarrassing. It smacks of people out to personally undermine their colleagues.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What he can do is declassify it. But that requires he do the process of declassifying.
The organizations have ZERO ability to self correct and probably less ability to institutionalize ALL their employees (increased privatization greatly undermines this as well as lowering morale.)
Their poor actual credibility is why their employees are forced to the extreme of leaking their evil deeds or even to the point of creating disgruntled employees who just dump out their secret tools because Snowden proved that even responsible leaking has changed nothing (other than more lies about the tiny reforms that have been claimed to have been made.
Trump has no credibility; to make them credible in his eyes would make them even worse than they are. If they stole the Pee tape from Russia at great costs trump would brag about it to the wrong people... Then get mad over his leaking (but not mad at himself; that's impossible.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
When you prioritize people who enjoy shoving their head up your ass over people who know how to do their jobs, then this is the result.
If Trump actually manages to hang on for the full four years, I think the US will be completely unrecognizable by the end. And not in a good way.
"President Donald Trump has just now announced that the administration would 'get to the bottom' of leaks."
Because we already know where it happens at the top.
are those that are friendly with Russia. Obviously, America has a traitor in office and the GOP continues to put their party over our nation and our security, as well as our allies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you're an intelligence officer making $55,000 as a GS-11, the prospect of getting a book deal as "the first to leak the bombshell that got Trump impeached" looks pretty damn good.
As Sir Humphries most capably put it, "the Ship of State is the only ship that leaks from the top." Be it the White house or the appointed heads of the intelligent organizations. Leaks happen when they are beneficial politically to the leaker usually.
First of all, thank you for agreeing/conceding, Snowden and Manning really were traitors. Most refreshing...
Now let's talk about Donald Trump's alleged "leak". Though the media exploded last week with these allegations of the fact of the leak — all citing an anonymous official present in the room — none would quote the content of it.
Why would they — after gleefully reprinting WikiLeaks for years — be so reserved all of a sudden? To protect the secret from spreading further? Nope — if Putin knows it already, there is no point in keeping quiet any more.
Which should tell any unbiased observer, nothing was actually leaked... Had they told you the contents, you would've shrugged and lost the outrage — much better to keep you in suspense. In other words, you've been played by Trump-haterz. Again.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
1. Story presents no new information
2. Fails to provide any statistically significant context to the reader
3. Cherry picks very different incidents then lumps them all into the same context.
4. Invokes good old fashioned FUD (e.g. "What if we're spreading lies, and what if we're putting people in danger by publishing what these anonymous sources tell us?" )
5. Is a bit ridiculous on it's face. US Intelligence community lost its credibility for years to come on Feb 5th of 2003 when Colin Powell squandered his in front of the world.
Saying US intelligence has lost credibility due to "leaks" is like saying Trump lost credibility because he lost the popular vote. Both true statements and both completely irrelevant.
Trump has installed extra-departmental poitical advisers to each branch of government, including the TLAs, and you claim it was Obama? And why are Rs so busy trying to get Assange and Manning if they're both uncovering Obama's duplicity?
Whose fault it that? It's the Times. You know there was a time when the press genuinely considered if there was a social good to publishing secret information. Now the only question is, could this possibly make the administration look bad? Print it.
Whether I like it or not, whether you like it or not, Donald Trump is the duly elected President of the United States of America.
This is a problem with the press, with their knowing, deliberate and systematic distortion of events, their malignant omission of facts , their supression of any counter-argument which happens to be effective, their misuse and abuse of unnamed sources, the total elision of local, natinoal and world events which would in any way contravene their preferred narrative.
What we're witnessing is the death throes of the MSM. The New World Order looks like citizens exposing fake documents based on a font. It looks like citizens hunting down terrorist professors by their eyebrows. It looks like people deserting the organs of officialdom, the universities and the MSM with their Fake ledes and their Fake social sciences, and their Fake degrees and their Fake labor shortages, their Fake immigration numbers, their Fake crime statistics, their Fake voter registrations , their Fake accusations of racism and sexism and nazism, their Fake phobias, and their Fake polls.
People are choosing to put the time and effort into educating each other, informing each other, and committing to a disintermediated, disinterested pursuit of truth, previously knowns as Western Civilization.
The NYTimes, like the rest of the MSM. like the university system , the entire industrial-liberal complex , which cannot say Islamofascism, which cannot say clash of world views is an adult-free cult of groupthink committed only to hurting this administration, even if it means a terrorist attack is made more likely by their actions, even if it means little girls get blown to bits.
They are a self-hating death cult and they need to need to have their deepest wish fulfilled.
So the US intelligence community can't keep a secret, but they want backdoors in all IT gear and encryption algorithms.
Yeah, that will end well...
How about loosing their cyber weapon arsenal to hackers?
How about having hired Snowden as a contractor?
How about missing every single terror attack?
How about missing the Russian infiltration of Crimea or move into Syria?
How about rendition, secret torture camps, public exposure of torture?
How about perpetually killing civilians with drone strikes based on their "intelligence"?
How about missing the fact that Bin Ladin was living around the corner in an allied country for 10 YEARS?
How about not finding WMD?
And they are losing credibility due to leaks? Please.
Hillary blamed her campaign team (as well as the Russian boogeyman) for her loss - she blamed her team for not getting her message out:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
She couldn't manage her own campaign team, yet we are expected to believe that she could run the entire US Executive branch?
Let me guess - you voted for Gary (Aleppo) Johnson? - I'm a Libertarian and even I couldn't pull the lever for him after he threw Austin Peterson's gift pistol into the trash.
http://www.washingtontimes.com...
It's easy to find fault in President Trump, but stop acting like we passed over Einstein,The Dalai Lama, and Mother Teresa to elect him.
No. Those are minor compared to the credibility loss caused by WHAT was leaked. That's why they're so utterly rabid about shooting the whistleblowers, after all.
It's not that there 'were leaks', it's that those leaks exposed the US intelligence community as being in no way related in any fashion whatsoever to the wellbeing or protection of any country - enemy, allied, or our own.
They destabilize regions to sell weapons (and vice-versa), they set up false-flags to give their employers excuses to trample over people's rights, they allow attacks to occur or even enable them because it lets draconian measures be passed as a result, they assassinate, murder, steal, rob, thieve, betray, blackmail, terrorize what they claim is their own side, all in the name of removing both security and liberty from all, and at immense budgetary costs at that. US Intelligence stands against everything the country has ever claimed to stand for, as well as its own flag.
THAT is why the leaks have shattered their credibility. But we can be certain they're preparing some attacks by possibly mentally disabled victims, that they will heroically stop at the last moment even now, just as the FBI has already done a few times already, in a blatant psy-op to show how needed they truly are.
Again.
Government is just crawling with left-wing loyalists who would like nothing more than to completely neuter Trump's Presidency, or better yet, get him impeached and/or thrown in jail for the crime of being a success and avoiding dependence upon government.
The worst thing is everybody knows that you are fucking them, now they have public interest to build counter measures. Even your small ignored allies will make their own code. You will do the fucking intelligence again but this time it will be fucking harder and harder and you will lose your visibility to fucking terrorists and criminals, because you awake everybody! You fucked up the job you are doing. You fucked up our families' life and future and put it in danger. And I am sure that is because you use those tools so much careless!!
they were corrupt and lawless under Obama, and they are corrupt and lawless under Trump, i doubt much has changed "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"
It's not that. They are a bureaucratic power unto themselves, completely unelected, but who believe that they have to do what's best for the country, elections be damned. Hence them accusing Russia of trying to influence the elections, despite there being no evidence to back that up.
A week ago, people were all over Trump for having 'leaked' something to the 2 Sergeis, except that Trump was just discussing w/ them something that was already common knowledge in the West: laptops rigged to be bombs. Israel had no issues w/ that, given that a ban on Middle Eastern (& later European) flights carrying laptops w/ carry-on luggage was bound to give that away anyway.
But now, the US intels - one of those 17 agencies that identified Russia - now happily goes about its merry leaky ways, and this time, UK is pissed, and actually does suspend intelligence sharing. People were all over the president on being leaky, but in fact, it was his enemies in the intelligence agencies that did that, and to the detriment of an ally.
Under that hack Comey, the FBI refused to investigate leaks of what was going on in the government. Now, maybe, under a new head, they'd investigate all leaks - starting from the ones from Jan 20th onwards to this day. That would be separate from the Special Counsel investigation into 'Russia', and hopefully, they'll get to the bottom of it. Oh, and while they're at it, they should also investigate the NSA surveillance that was ordered under Obama since almost 2008
The White House Staff wouldn't know the name of the Libyan suicide bomber: that had to come from one of the TLA agencies. The White House staff leaks have been about each other - Jared about Bannon, Priebus about Jared & so on
Freedom or security, pick one. Free societies fight for freedom. Anything else fights to control.
I am not even kidding. I know it sounds like trolling, but Obama's administration did set up this time bomb. They issued an executive order forcing all 17 agencies to share information. Since it's much more difficult to track who has access to the information, it's much more difficult to prevent leaks. And Obama only issued this order 3 months before leaving office. Trump can't rescind the order just yet because of all the spurious accusations of Russian connections. The idea that information was always leaked is preposterous. It was always compartmentalized. So the leaks were limited in nature and they much easier to track. This de-compartmentalization was done specifically with the purpose of undermining the incoming administration of an opposing political party. It was never about any principles other than hurting the incoming administration. This goes well-beyond removing all the furniture from the White House that the Clinton administration did to troll the incoming Bush administration. This was actually a policy implemented to hurt the incoming administration. There will always be some people, who work in DC in professional capacity, who oppose the President politically. They just couldn't do quite so much damage before.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
But Apple, you need to develop a backdoor for us to get into iPhones. There's no way it would ever fall into the wrong hands. Pinky promise.
Three may keep a secret if two are dead.
Don't forget to mention the political, financial, and industrial espionage and sabotage. Against countries they call "allies". Remember, they will not stop what they are doing. The sooner the EU can cut the US out of everything except trade, the better for them.
...with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Have any of the several investigations reported yet? Are you privy to the workings of one of those investigations? When the reports do come out, and lay out the damning details of all the evidence, will you admit you are just blowing partisan smoke?
Answers: 1) No 2) No 3) Of course not
Oh you mean last year.
From that president who offered the Russians "more flexibility"
You people who think there's much difference from one president to the next, from one party to the next, are so absurd. There is power, and power protects power.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The fact that the White House staff went into a panic immediately after the discussion, hurriedly contacting the intelligence agencies to give them the heads up, shows the seriousness of this disclosure. The so-called president revealed the city where the intelligence was gathered, thereby compromising the source. Trump himself seems to believe it was a serious leak, else why would he have made those "I never said Israel" comments?
Almost as disturbing as Trump's ineptness is the willingness of some people such as mi to wilfully ignore the threat to the US. That you are partisan first, and loyal to your country only as a distant second is truly shameful.
TFA conflates Manning and Snowden with the Manchester bomb info leakers which is a big mistake. There is a huge difference between leaking in the public interest like Manning and Snowden and doing it to sell newspapers because you think the public are interested. I can't imagine why the editors of the NYT thought it was a good idea to publish info that harms an active investigation. It's pretty obvious that finding the bomb maker is important. It's also pretty obvious that you shouldn't tell them what the police know. For all they know everything went up with the bomb, showing them the fragments gives them big clues about the lines that the police will be following. How is that OK? Is it because the funny little people in Manchester are a long way away? The NYT really need to answer for their appalling editorial decision.
This is, of course, simply a turnabout of how the system worked in the 1950s and 60s, when the British services were so totally infiltrated by the Soviets that the US couldn't trust them with anything at all.
Yes, one is clearly maliciously bad judgement which merits impeachment over a betrayal of the interests of the American people(*), the other is revealing the perfidy of said bad judgment to the American people in whose interest it is necessary to expose, which merits commendation.
The difference shows why what's legal, and what's right are not congruent sets. I would thank you for the demonstration, but it is clear and readily apparent, much like your own biases, so there's no point, I might as well thank the sun for shining, or grass for growing.
(*)Unless, of course, you think he's senile, in which case, the Vice President should be impeached for not noticing that incompetence.
Have a leaking problem?
DEPENDS!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The US dollar is quite strong relative to other currencies. That is a more plausible explanation for the drop in tourism. Do you really think people going on vacation care who occupies the White House?
That the bomber was an islamic terrorist. It just doesn't fit their refugee agenda.
Some people are born with only 1 leg or no legs. We do not proceed to declare that there are two other types of humans (persons with 1 leg and those with none) and pretend that because they were born that way (as opposed to being victims of crime or accidents) it's "natural". We simply say the truth: people born with one leg or no legs have birth defects. This says nothing about them as PERSONS and nothing about their VALUE, it is simply a statement about an unfortunate aspect of their biology.
Same thing with your examples. They are not alternate normals; they are birth defects. Nothing about those conditions is normal or should be used to define alternate forms of normal. The rules of society should not be modified to try to pretend that these conditions are anything other than what they are: defects. Brainwashing yourself into thinking that abnormality is normality is nothing to brag about - it's a sign of a weak intellect and a spineless character that is easily bullied by the cultural fads of the fashionable elements of pop culture. Keep telling yourself Cailyn Jenner is a woman if you like, but HE is still Bruce Jenner, just with some chemical alterations and surgical manginlgs. Bruce is perfectly welcome to pay somebody to do these things to him and I hope he is happy since there's no going back.... but society is stupid if it embraces this (or any other dysfunction, like people who eat themselves to500+ pounds, kleptomaniacs, etc) as "normal". Having compassion for such people is FINE and something we should all do, but that's entirely different from getting sucked into their delusions.
Scoot Libby was NOT the source of the Plame leaks; that was Richard Armitage.
Armitage confessed to Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald early in the investigation, and pointed out that it wasn't a crime because Plame wasn't actually an undercover agent.
Fitzgerald, however, didn't want to end his investigation after just a few months with nothing to show for it, so he persecuted everyone he could find. He 'got' Libby, by interviewing under oath months after a series of phone calls, and then arrest and convicting Libby when the phone records (that Fitzgerald already had) showed that Libby had misremembered the order he talk to certain people about the Plame leaks. This was somehow construed as 'Obstruction of Justice', even though Fitzgerald already knew who had done the leaking AND that the leak wasn't even a crime.
The fact that Bush let Libby be convicted rather than immediately issuing a pardon (or better yet, arrest Fitzgerald for his abuse of authority) shows that Bush was far more inclined to let people be punished, even if their crime was only ticky-tack BS.
Sure he will. You better believe it, because Trump never fails on his words!
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
It worked in Roman army; maybe it would work in US intelligence agencies :)
Since January 1, there have been two serious intelligence leaks that we know of. One was the leak of intelligence received in confidence from our Israeli allies to the Russians regarding bombs constructed out of laptops. That was leaked by the Leaker-In-Chief, Cheeto Jesus.
The second leak was information about the British investigation into the Manchester bombings. Who leaked this to the press? Well, almost all of the people who work at the intelligence agencies still work there and presumably know about the harm caused by these kinds of leaks. So, who is new? People at the top of the agencies - political appointees. And people in the White House. Those are the places to look for this leak.
The fact is, with the self-justification that "well, trump is evil" a number of people in the bureaucracy of the administration have come to feel they get to determine who gets to know what, to hell with any other concerns than their own personal agendas or desires.
Now it will bite these narcissists in the ass, as they've just handed the tangerine tyrant a PERFECT excuse to go on a draconian house cleaning and make a nasty example of whomever he catches (and the public, by large will agree).
-Styopa
... and yet leaking is almost never punished, much less prosecuted.
If you want to see why, look at one of the few cases of leaking that *was* prosecuted: Scooter Libby's leaking of the fact Valerie Plame was an active CIA agent.
It was leaked by Richard Armitrage. Libby was convicted of lying to investigators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Novak had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage."
"The scandal led to a criminal investigation; no one was charged for the leak itself. Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush."
Do you have ESP?
All your Russia are belong to Trump henchmen
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
First: Of the myriad snap responses available to an individual who has been falsely accused, "But look at what those other crims got away with!" does not rate in the Top 100 Most Suggestive Of Innocence.
Second: A world leader under investigation by special counsel is one thing. The dawning realisation that he should also be assisting the Spelling Police with their inquiries is quite another.
Third: This tweet provides conclusive proof the president writes his own stuff.* Presumably, the rest of the White House staff are too busy furtively making notes for their explosive personal memoirs to spell-check the president, whose penchant for spontaneous remarks on social media pretty much ties up what remains of their time in white-knuckle post-tweet damage control. (The spelling error has since been corrected.)
Case in point: White House staff raced around madly – after the president met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office (awkward!) – to deny The Washington Post's report that Trump used the meeting to spray around some high-level intelligence. Only to be Trumped by a presidential tweet declaring, in effect: "Sure I handed over the intel. Big deal."
Is "the Russian thing" a crisis, though?
The Australian newspaper (kind of Murdochs print version of Fox news) votes no. "The media needs to get a grip," the paper declared on Thursday of the reporting frenzy surrounding Trump's high-level Russian footsie.
"It is bringing discredit on itself, constantly overstepping benchmarks of credulity in unceasing attempts to portray Mr Trump as an unmitigated blackguard."
And indeed, it's good to be reminded there do remain, in the world, serious and cool-headed news organisations who fiercely maintain their obligation to detachment and rigour, and who know in their hearts this thing will not qualify as a genuine scandal until some basic, objective benchmarks are met: the involvement of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, for instance, or some irrefutable connection to the bathroom renovations of Julia Gillard in 1994.
You can smell the desperation of Trumps deplorables now, as his presidency circles the drain, its the last gasp of primitive last century men.
All they have is lies and paranoid delusional conspiracy theories.
Gets popcorn, sits back smiling.
This will last until the US shuts off the free information spigot that other intelligence agencies have come to rely on like a crack addict needing their next fix.
We can play this game if they want.
Remove all foreign access to classified information. Hell, we even have a designation for it ( NOFORN ) already.
Got terrorists ? Too bad. Is your problem.
Yes, we knew about it, but we're not sharing secrets anymore remember ?
If it turns out that current Administration opposition are responsible for the leaks, then this country is pretty much done anyway.
They lack the ability to set aside personal issues and old hatred. As a result, the entire country suffers from their never-ending temper tantrums.
What really needs to happen is a complete rout of the entire system. Clear out all the old dead stuff and start over.
Next election, remember what voting Red or Blue has done for this country in the past few decades and ask yourself when you're finally going to get tired enough to do something about it.
Lol
I love shit like this. It's like the Democrats haven't realized yet that they lost literally everything.
We own all branches of government, we own the next 30 years of Supreme Court decisions... We literally have everything. You have nothing, except smug condescending insults... And you can enjoy them, it's fine. It's all there is for you.
You will also own the honour of the worst govt in History, and get your asses handed to you at the mid terms.
Every post you make now has the reek of incoherent bravado, and fear.
So much fun watching you desperately spin and squirm, mmmm, nice popcorn.
Yup, liberal Democrats in the intelligence agencies and in major papers like the New York Times have no problems leaking info even or perhaps especially if it gets innocent people killed. Anything to try to embarrass or defeat a political opponent. Expose how we find and track terrorists by listening for their phone calls? No problem. Expose it to try to embarrass President Bush -- who cares if that causes hundreds of innocents to die at the hands of terrorists that would otherwise have been caught. Disgusting. Clean house. Fire all liberal Democrats.
Sure. Just like in Montana.
Our guy literally body slams one of your pasty white autistic screeching activists pretending to be a journalist, and you STILL CAN'T WIN!
HAHAHA!
Beating up reporters is only the next natural step in your embrace of fascism. Next you can tit tut the rest of us on how violent "the left" is.
It took less than 24 hours for those reporters to admit they led about what happened, so I'm not sure that incident says more bad about this one guy who won the election it about the press in general.
Please post where it says they lied.
They aren't reporters.
Reporters watch, record, and report.
Activists accost, accuse, lie, manipulate, leave out facts, spin, and shill.
The man who was body slammed was an activist, not a reporter. He deserved it. Now maybe he will just report the fucking news instead of trying to be it.
They lost credibility long before the leaks. Especially the shitty, non-intel they handed Obama. Personally, I think that's his fault. He took intel he wanted to see and ignored that which didn't fit with his 'America is the bad guy' world view. It demoralised the intel community to the point where they no longer care since anything they get will be politicized.
So yeah, thanks Obama.
Pax Vobiscum
Some leaks will be tactical moves politically by factions within the government. Other leaks are because the government is lying and people need to know. Leakers have often come to see their masters as criminals who need to be held to account. I'm glad the US government is having trouble hiding it's lying and bad dealing and full on murder.
Only boring people are ever bored.