Transparency and National Security

Should transparency stop at the water’s edge?

The Shameful Treatment Of Bradley Manning

Pfc. Bradley Manning is being treated worse than a Prisoner Of War, and he hasn’t been convicted of a crime yet.

22 New Charges Against Pfc. Manning, Still No Connection To Wikileaks

Pfc. Bradley Manning faces twenty-two new charges, including one that could put him before a firing squad, but investigators still can’t prove any direct links between him and Wikileaks.

An Intelligence Failure In The Middle East?

Some in Washington are claiming the intelligence community missed the warning signs of unrest in Tunisia and Egypt in what looks like little more than an effort to create scapegoats if things go wrong.

Did Wikileaks Help Bring Down A Corrupt Arab Leader?

Information made public by Wikileaks appears to have played a role in sparking the protest movement that has brought down the President of Tunisia.

Wikileaks, The Pentagon Papers, And The First Amendment

The lawyer who argued The Pentagon Papers case points out how Julian Assange is not Daniel Ellsberg, and how prosecuting him could have disastrous results for press freedom in the United States.

Treason And The Wikileaks Case

There’s been much talk recently about treason charges in the Wikileaks case, an most of it has been entirely wrong.

Feds Block WikiLeaks From Own Workers to ‘Protect’ Info

The Obama administration is banning hundreds of thousands of federal employees from calling up the WikiLeaks site on government computers because the leaked material is still formally regarded as classified.

Hollywood Lies About Plame

The editors of the Washington Post want you to know that “Fair Game,” the new movie about the Valerie Plame affair, is “Hollywood myth making.” Propaganda and lies is more like it.

Pentagon: We Could Have Taken WikiLeaks Down

The Pentagon could have taken down WikiLeaks but decided not to. Out of kindness, I suppose.

Palin: Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the WikiLeaks Fiasco

Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to raise “Serious Questions about the Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the WikiLeaks Fiasco.” They’re more interesting than I’d expected.

Someone Is Trying To Sabotage The Iranian Nuclear Program

A crippling, and technologically advanced, computer virus and attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists lead to only one conclusion; someone is doing everything they can short of military action to make sure Iran doesn’t develop nuclear weapons.

WikiLeaks, Secrets, and Reality

The choice is between a world in which officials can share information and carry out reasoned debates with one another and a world in which nothing can be written down.

Wikileaks Media Ethics Wikileaks Media Ethics

Classified Information and Journalistic Ethics

The two English language newspapers who have been Julian Assange’s accomplices in disseminating stolen secrets defend themselves.

Wikileaks Releases Diplomatic Cables, Revealing International Secrets

A new round of Wikileaks documents is out, and it opens the door on diplomatic correspondence previously hidden from the public.

New Plant Raises New North Korean Nuclear Concerns

North Korea has unveiled to the world a new nuclear processing facility that puts back on the table the question of just what we should, or can, do about the fact that a rogue state possesses nuclear weapons and wants to build more.

Planes Were Apparent Target Of Yemeni Bombs

Thanks to a combination of good intelligence and fast action, it looks like the U.S. and UK avoided a serious attack on airliners last week.

Jonah Goldberg: Why Isn’t Julian Assange Dead?

Jonah Goldberg has written a bad column. In this case, an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune headlined “Why is Assange still alive?”

Pentagon Fighting WikiLeaks with Technology

The Pentagon is looking at a system that would flag suspicious access to data, similar to the alerts by credit cards companies designed to prevent fraudulent charges.

Wikileaks Releases Treasure Trove Of Iraq War Documents

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.

Wikileaks Didn’t Reveal That Many Secrets, SecDef Says

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in a newly released letter that the Wikileaks Afghan War document dump wasn’t as damaging as the Pentagon initially claimed. So what was the uproar all about?

Obama Wins Executive Secrecy Case

The Obama administration has persuaded the nation’s most liberal appellate court that the executive branch’s right to secrecy trumps the rights of people claiming they were tortured by the United States Government.

Overreaction to 9/11?

Fareed Zakaria argues that the fact al Qaeda has not launched a major attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 proves we overreacted to those attacks. I beg to differ.

WikiLeaks vs. CINDER

The Pentagon, responding to obvious flaws in its security revealed by the WikiLeaks debacle, is working on a data mining program that will monitor employee behavior for suspicious activity.

Joyner vs. Greenwald on al Jazeera

OTB’s James Joyner and Salon’s Glenn Greenwald discuss WikiLeaks and its implications for journalism on Al Jazeera’s “Inside Story.”

Why Won’t Pentagon Help WikiLeaks?

Glenn Greenwald asks, “Why won’t the Pentagon help WikiLeaks redact documents?” For the same reason we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Obama’s Shadow War on Terror

Barack Obama has significantly widened his predecessor’s global war on terrorism, even if he’s no longer calling it that.

Tish Long Becomes 1st Woman US Intel Agency Chief

Tish Long, the new director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), is the first woman to head a major U.S. intelligence agency.

Wikileaks v. The Pentagon

There’s a war of words developing between the Pentagon and the information-sharing website Wikileaks.

Obama Supports Warrantless Searches

The Obama administration wants the FBI to be able to look at your Internet records without the inconvenience of respecting your 4th Amendment rights.

Quote of the Day – WikiLeaks Edition

Humor me for a moment: if your life was in danger, would you trust Julian Assange to keep your identity a secret? – Joshua Foust

Balancing Secrecy and Democracy

“I don’t condone leaking secrets. But nor do I condone a policy that can only work in secret.” – Bernard Finel

WikiLeaks Publishes 90,000 Stolen Classified Documents

The scumbags at WikiLeaks have published a huge trove of classified documents provided to them by one or more traitors in our military.

Russian Spies Like Us Plead Guilty, Prepare For Old-Fashioned Spy Swap

The members of the Russian spy ring broken up last week by the FBI are headed back to Mother Russia.

Waterboarding and ‘Torture’ in the American Media

Did the American media cover up torture by the Bush Administration?

Russian Spies Like Us

Ten Russian agents posing as Americans and living in the suburbs of DC, New York, and Boston for a decade to glean valuable intelligence have been arrested by the FBI.