What a week. Thanksgiving. Korean peninsular envy. WikiLeaks.
By now, as the world is well aware, the website WikiLeaks released to major news agencies—and, really, though the stunning levelling of the web to everyone—a portion of nearly 250,000 diplomatic communiqués it obtained through gray channels.
The president and his secretary of state are nervously calling allies, warning them they might very well be offended by what the president and the secretary of state might or might not have said regarding allies and enemies.
[“Uh, I’m sorry to bother you, uh, I said some things about you I shouldn’t have. I’m really, really sorry. Will you still be my friend?”]
For the full article (at CatholicVote.org), please click here.
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Thank Heavens I'm not a lawyer but I wonder where intent comes into the crime of treason. Selling government secrets to a foreign power seems to be treason (Pollard, et. al.), as is leaking secrets to an enemy government (Rosenbergs, etc) but what if someone leaks material for no financial gain and only to make his country stronger by exposing governmental dishonesty and incompetence? Can whistle-blowers on bureaucratic waste be called traitors? All illegal no doubt but is it treason? Perhaps lawyers might kindly comment.
As for dislikeable reporters and foul government officials, it recalls Shaw on fox hunting – the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.
Thanks for another splendidly reasoned piece from Brad! From Kabul it is woefully clear that American government tries to do too much, is too big, and is thus dysfunctional and often counter-productive despite (sometimes) the best of intentions.
Stephen Masty
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former member of Thatcher's cabinet, writes in the Daily Telegraph how the documents were leaked. I'd not seen this in US media so I thought it might be of interest,
Stephen Masty
'The 250,000 dispatches and diplomatic cables revealed by WikiLeaks have, apparently, been on a Pentagon-run electronic database that could be accessed, quite properly, by at least tens of thousands and, possibly, hundreds of thousands of officials and military personnel with the appropriate security clearance.
'The intention appears to have been to ensure that information available to any one of the US’s intelligence agencies should be available to the whole of its intelligence community, in the national interest. While that was reasonable, it is disturbing that so little care was taken to ensure that highly sensitive material reached only those who needed to know.'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8169712/WikiLeaks-Do-they-have-a-right-to-privacy.html