US intelligence and wikileaks.org
For researchers interested in government secrecy, www.wikileaks.org can often be a valuable site. Sometimes, however, it presents information in an unbearably biased fashion. Consider, for example, this recent headline:
“US intelligence planned to destroy wikileaks”.
This sounded like quite a story. What would be the implications if that was true? Should Google pull out of the US? I was curious and started reading a bit in the leaked study commissioned by the US Department of Defense Intelligence Analysis Program (DIAP). It examined how wikileaks.org might jeopardise the interests of US forces by playing vital intelligence into the hands of its various opponents. Not surprisingly, it concluded that
“Wikileaks.org, a publicly accessible Internet Web site, represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.”
Looking then for signs that US intelligence actually planned to disrupt this site, I only stumbled across a number of rather common-sense recommendations:
“the identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders,
leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”.
Don’t get me wrong. I admire and support the power of investigative sources on the net. Still, it is also understandable (and a calculated risk for leakers) that those who would like to keep the information will not pull their legal punches against them for informing the public. That’s not anything new under the sun nor has this threat become more serious for leakers than before.
What I find disturbing, then, is the sensationalist headline. Based on what I’ve gathered from DIAP study, this is a far cry from any plan to “destroy” Wikileaks. This kind of reporting is, in my view, entirely inappropriate. A more factual approach would be in order.
