BleepingComputer.com: The press and spies

The New York Times just published an article claiming they received a leaked document signed by general Petraeus that says we are going to step up black ops in syria, iran, saudi, and yemen.

Then I read a piece in the New York Post written by Ralph Peters. He is a retired cold war spy chief turned novelist. He said that the document was just bureaucratic boiler plate that was passed off by a political stooge with a clearance for political gain. Peters' outrage is at the fact that enemies in those countries and others will see this as a legit threat from spies, and act accordingly (execution, torture, fill in the blank).

I don't read either the New York Times or Post regularly, but what Ralph Peters was saying reminded my of the Valerie Plame CIA outing by the Washington Post. Is this a new phenomena, spies being sold out by the press? Or have I not been paying attention?

And is anyone held accountable? I mean on one hand there is the Bill of Rights and freedom of the press. But on the other hands there are laws against treason. I just hate to think a good, hard working spy could be tortured to death so that politicians can leak a story and use the press to jump up in the polls.

links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/world/25military.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedc...6YbSQilIzOHHDUM

Your concern is welcome. I always remember back in WWII when a congress person stood on the floor and announced that are subs in the pacific where doing great because the japs didn't set the depth charges deep enough. Cost of a lot of boats. About 10 years another clown stood on the House or Senate floor and announced that bin laden was using a cell phone and we could track him and drop a bomb on his head. He stopped using the cell phone. The New York Times, Washing Post, L.A Times seem to hate this county at times. What makes news papers like the ones I mentioned and there are more think shooting off there mouths is more important than the security of this nation is beyond me. They should be tried for receiving stolen property and treason. To me it's treason!!!

That is exactly what I was trying to say. Anything for a buck these days. They care more about selling papers and ad space then accurate, honest reporting. Guess what jerks, your medium is dying. James Bond needs to head over to the press corp and smack some of them around.

Haha, I say that, but then again I still read the news knowing this so I guess I am a bigger sucker than the papers.

A lot of people got upset because the N.S.A was listing to some over seas phone call trying to catch the bad guys. Of course it was kind of a secret until the NYT printed it. Same people aren't bothered by the fact a secret was given to our enemy.

Speaking of leaking I found this story in my e-mail a few days ago:

Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press

From the article:

"The indictment of Mr. Drake was the latest evidence that the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks. In 17 months in office, President Obama has already outdone every previous president in pursuing leak prosecutions. His administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press. "

Promises, promises.

You're newspapers seem to be as bad as ours,will stop at nothing just to sell papers and make money.I stopped buying them a few years ago as most of the so called news was either speculation or just plain lies

Nice read Bezukhov. If it's like the old days some leaks are planned to give false information to the bad guys. How one would know which one is what I don't know. Remember the Walkers. When one works in this line of work keep your mouth shut. They have gave there word to this nation keep it. There are thousands of people working in places like N.S.A. and it's not there call on what should or should not be released to the public. There are people way up the pay scale who make those kind of decisions and we will never know who they are; as it should be.

http://www.examiner.com/blog/printexaminer...mised-this-year

From this site:

What is commonly viewed as one of the worst intelligence leaks in
warfighting history, the blogger at Wikileaks.org, Julian Assange,
received more than 90,000 classified documents about US actions in
Afghanistan from someone believed to be either a military or
intelligence source.

This post has been edited by thrillhouse: 26 July 2010 - 04:19 PM

thrillhouse good mourning. I wonder how that many documents can be taken and no body saw it. There has to be a way to trace the movement of 90,000 plus documents back to the sender. I hope the English government is also working on this problem from there end. I'm not sure this White House will allow the investigation to find any thing. My understanding is that all these papers were created during the Bush White House. We will just have to wait and see. I hope it doesn't take long. There can't be that many people who had access to that much information.

I think they know who is the source of the documents and already have him under arrest. Right now the main issue is the public posting of the documents.

The source:
Bradley Manning

The publication:
In Disclosing Secret Documents, WikiLeaks Seeks ‘Transparency’

There was a follow up in the examiner that said they "detail field reports on the Pakistan government's relationships with the Taliban and al-Qaeda." Which could be a good read but the article also says it won't change the war. Hey Layback Bear. Kind of off topic, but check this out: http://freerangeinternational.com/blog/?p=3357

The article is called Riding with Ghosts and it is about a group of people trying to make a difference there. Reads like Tom Clancy or something, I think it is incredible if it's true.

Thanks for the read thrillhouse. It won't be long the NYT will have there real names and families address in bold print on the front page.

This post has been edited by Layback Bear: 27 July 2010 - 04:44 PM

boethe Bradley Manning is one suspect. It's hard for me to believe just one person did 90,000 plus all by him self. He just might be the fall guy.

Hi,

from this article: BBC

According to an investigation by the Washington Post earlier this month into the US intelligence sector, 854,000 US citizens have the highest level of security clearance.

That's a lot of potential leaks.

There are about a million people having access to these sources.. Not difficult to imagine there's more than one leak. If in addition into account the amount of flash drives/laptops/data the army and governments seems to loose then it doesn't even necessarily have to be someone with much clearance at all.


regards myrti

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17115660/

The copy and paste war is getting intense, but this is an article about how the fbi is losing 3-4 laptops a month. On another note, somewhat off topic, what do you think of this, which is real: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hvaeHllwtw This guy is running for Governor of Tennessee.