Category: national security

So I have a very specific question about the “classified emails”, and it seems not to be answered by “Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal E-Mail System .” A few quotes:

From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.

…
For example, seven e-mail chains concern matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level when they were sent and received. These chains involved Secretary Clinton both sending e-mails about those matters and receiving e-mails from others about the same matters. There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.

…
Separately, it is important to say something about the marking of classified information. Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked “classified” in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it.

I will state that there is information which is both classified and available to the public. For example, the Snowden documents are still classified, and I have friends with clearances who need to leave conversations when they come up. They are, simultaneously, publicly available. There is a legalistic position that such information is only classified. Such rejection of reality is uninteresting to me.

I can read Comey’s statements two ways. One is that Clinton was discussing Snowden documents, which she likely needed to do as Secretary of State. The other is that she was discussing information which was not both public and classified. My assessment of her behavior is dependent on knowing this.

Are facts available to distinguish between these cases?

With the crisis in Japan, attention to the plight of those trying to remove Colonel Kaddafi from power in Libya has waned, but there are still calls, including ones from the Arab League, to impose a no-fly zone. Such a zone would “even the fight” between the rebels and Kaddafi’s forces.

There are strong calls to move quickly, such as “Fiddling While Libya Burns” in the New York Times. But I think there are some important questions that I haven’t heard answered. A no-fly zone is a military intervention in Libya. It involves an act of war against the current government, and however bad that government is, we need to consider the question not of a “no-fly zone” but an “act of war” and its implications.

Some questions I’d love to hear answered include:

• What if it doesn’t work? Are we willing to put soldiers on the ground to support the rebels?
• What if it does? Who’s in charge?
• What if it half works? We imposed a no fly zone in Iraq in 1991, and then invaded 11 years later because we hadn’t thought through the question of what we do to remove the no-fly zone. If the rebels end up with a Kurdistan, how do we finish? Another invasion? Fly walk away and let the Libyan air force to bomb in 2 years?
• What does success look like? What’s our goal? Do we support offensive operations? If the rebels end up with some aircraft, do we let them fly?

There are other questions, about sovereignty, but I think there’s a good tradeoff to be made between preventing democide and respecting sovereignty. But I haven’t seen a proposal which seems to have considered what happens after a no-fly zone is imposed. Is there one?

Friday night an arrest warrant went out, and was then rescinded, for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He commented “We were warned to expect “dirty tricks”. Now we have the first one.” Even the New York Times was forced to call it “strange.”

I think that was the wrong warning. Wikileaks is poking at a very dangerous system. We went to war with Iraq, claiming it had links to Al Qaida and chemical weapons programs. (I think there were good reasons for both Iraqi citizens and Western democracies to want a well planned and executed regime change in Iraq, and even better reasons to expect that attempts to do so would descend into chaos. But that’s besides the point.) Since then, we have publicly announced that we have death squads targeting US citizens. Does Wikileaks expect any less?

The American system of classifying documents is seriously flawed. That’s been the conclusion of every blue ribbon panel that studies it. Transparency and accountability are key tools that we the people use to constrain the power of government. But people in power never like transparency. They don’t like oversight and second-guessing. So over-classification is a natural outcome. Insofar as leaks help to constrain that, they’re useful to us, the governed. To the extent that leaks force a conversation about “why was this document classified,” they’re useful.

Now, leaking the names of informers is clearly problematic. It seems that, like many news organizations, Wikileaks asked the Pentagon for advice on redaction. They were rebuffed.

But that’s not the point of this post. The first point of this post is to say that the Leviathan is an angry and mean son of a bitch that’s now going to attack Wikileaks as hard as it can. If discrediting works, great. If not, expect escalation. Whatever their personal failings may or may not be, more transparency and accountability in government is a worthy goal, and we should support that goal. We should support that goal even as we can see flaws in Wikileaks. And despite their flaws, Wikileaks is making more transparency in less comfortable areas than anyone else.

The right response to the Afghan war diary would be for the Pentagon and for each of our allies to review what they have classified and why, and release more of it. Little of what was released was really surprising, and much of it should have been officially released with minor redaction. But instead of that review, we see the Leviathan lashing out at Wikileaks.

To the extent that Wikileaks pushes governments to become more transparent, we all benefit. If But more transparency not the reaction we’re seeing, and to distract us from that is the dirtiest trick so far.

If you think government has too much power, you should support Wikileaks. If you think that America’s overseas entanglements are hurting America or the world, you should support Wikileaks. If you think military adventurism is hurting the world, you should support Wikileaks. Because whatever Wikileak’s faults, their goals are important ones.

Which brings us to the second point of this post, which is to remind you, when you read negative stories about Wikileaks, ask yourself “who benefits?” The answer isn’t going to be “you and me.”