Wikileaks.....Political Bombshell

• ou1980

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/29cables.html
  
  NY Times reporting some of the leaked classified memos detailing...
  
  Dangerous standoff with Pakistan...
  Gitmo became game of 'Let's Make A Deal'...
  US to Slovenia: Take a prisoner if you want meeting with Obama...
  Clinton Orders US Diplomats to Spy on Other Countries at UN...
  China conducting computer sabotage...
  Saudis chief financiers for al Qaeda...
  Arabs urge air strike on Iran...
  MOST EMBARRASSING, DAMAGING DISCLOSURE IN DECADES...
  WIKILEAKS: We've been hit with 'mass distributed denial of service attack'...
  SENATORS: PROSECUTE THE LEAKERS!
  
  In my opinoun these fools are doing more damage than good by releasing these memo's, crashing relations with foreign nations while jeapordizing our national security....
• ou1980

  More from Time in these memos...
  
  ¶ A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”
  
  ¶ Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.
  
  ¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”
  
  ¶ Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan’s vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money “a significant amount” that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, “was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination.” (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
  
  ¶ A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
  
  ¶ Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the “worst in the region” in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar’s security service was “hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals,” the cable said.
  
  ¶ An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including “lavish gifts,” lucrative energy contracts and a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi “appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin” in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoyed supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he was undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignored his edicts.
  
  ¶ Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States’ failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send “new” arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.
  
  ¶ Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official “that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S.”
• Ty Webb

  

  How the fuck do they get this shit??
• fish82

  

  Ty Webb;579559 wrote:How the fuck do they get this shit??

  
  He's gotta have a pretty well paid mole in the DoD is the only thing I can come up with.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  I've heard that cables in the State Department are incredibility old and suspect to tampering or hacking, due to years of poor funding. It would not surprise me if the leaker had access to the hard copies or obtained them using hacker software to tap into servers.
  
  But, the revelations are a little surprising, but not so much as they provide context to the many press reports I've been reading for years. It is describes hints of rumors I've been hearing for a while.
  
  As someone who is currently on the outside of the official foreign policy community, I think they are great and provide more points for analysis. Of course, what hurts is the names released and the negotiating tactics used by the U.S. Now, allies may be less than willing to work with the U.S. if they know the record could be released a year or so later. It could end up hurting us. I see the need to release the info to the public, but at the same times it could hurt our foreign policy.
• Manhattan Buckeye

  We've known about this for some time, here is an older NYT story:
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html
• dwccrew

  

  So they can get all this information but can't find the documents stating who really killed JFK or how the US government was involved in the WTC tragedy? :rolleyes:
• Belly35

  

  dwccrew;580249 wrote:So they can get all this information but can't find the documents stating who really killed JFK or how the US government was involved in the WTC tragedy? :rolleyes:

  
  Lets not forget about verification of Birth Certificates
• believer

  

  Belly35;580274 wrote:Lets not forget about verification of Birth Certificates

  Yes - this and the truth on whether or not we really went to the moon. lol
• Writerbuckeye

  

  All comedy aside, if ANY of these revelations lead to the deaths of US soldiers, I want the folks who leaked this crap brought up on treason charges.
  
  Freedom of the press is not absolute (just like freedom of speech). There are some responsibilities that go with the freedom.
• Ankle Breaker

  

  Writerbuckeye;580467 wrote:All comedy aside, if ANY of these revelations lead to the deaths of US soldiers, I want the folks who leaked this crap brought up on treason charges.
  
  Freedom of the press is not absolute (just like freedom of speech). There are some responsibilities that go with the freedom.

  
  Well put. It shouldn't matter which side of the political aisle you sit on this issue. WikiLeaks isn't good for any Americans. IMO
• Con_Alma

  ptown_trojans_1;579883 wrote:...
  
  As someone who is currently on the outside of the official foreign policy community, I think they are great and provide more points for analysis....

  Huh? Isn't that all of us on this board?
• jhay78

  

  Writerbuckeye;580467 wrote:All comedy aside, if ANY of these revelations lead to the deaths of US soldiers, I want the folks who leaked this crap brought up on treason charges.
  
  Freedom of the press is not absolute (just like freedom of speech). There are some responsibilities that go with the freedom.

  
  Exactly. At what point do these people (or Julian Assange) get labeled as spies and get charged with treason?
• believer

  

  jhay78;580565 wrote:Exactly. At what point do these people (or Julian Assange) get labeled as spies and get charged with treason?

  Treason would only come into play if Assange were an American citizen. Is that right or does his Australian citizenship not matter? However, I do think the Feds should prosecute this overtly arrogant son of a bitch to the fullest extent of U.S. and international law.
• I Wear Pants

  I get really excited for each round of Wikileaks.
• rmolin73

  

  I guarantee you it will lead to criminal charges.
• Writerbuckeye

  

  Isn't there some low level wonk being held right now in connection with these leaks?
  
  If they can prove he's complicit in this, then treason charges should be forthcoming. Perhaps if they actually start holding people accountable for this stuff, those who are considering it might think twice.
  
  As for the Aussie, I do believe there are people "off the books" who can take care of him.
• ou1980

  Manhattan Buckeye;580152 wrote:We've known about this for some time, here is an older NYT story:
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html

  
  This story is new.....
• IggyPride00

  

  rmolin73;581219 wrote:I guarantee you it will lead to criminal charges.

  
  Assange is for the most part safe as long as he doesn't goto any countries that have an outstanding warrant for his arrest or are willing to extradite him to the U.S if the government wins some kind of court judgment against him.
  
  I will say, I read a Forbes cover story he just recently did, and this first paragraph kind of got me excited.
  

  Early next year, Julian Assange says, a major American bank will suddenly find itself turned inside out. Tens of thousands of its internal documents will be exposed on Wikileaks.org with no polite requests for executives’ response or other forewarnings. The data dump will lay bare the finance firm’s secrets on the Web for every customer, every competitor, every regulator to examine and pass judgment on.
  
  When? Which bank? What documents? Cagey as always, Assange won’t say, so his claim is impossible to verify. But he has always followed through on his threats. Sitting for a rare interview in a London garden flat on a rainy November day, he compares what he is ready to unleash to the damning e-mails that poured out of the Enron trial: a comprehensive vivisection of corporate bad behavior. “You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

  It sounds like he has somewhat had his fun embarrassing the U.S government, now his next target are major banks and financial institutions, and I would be shitting my pants if I were them because he has no qualms about leaking even the most sensitive, most embarrassing material.
  
  The leaking of the sensitive government data I am not cool with, corporate fraud though, I hope he knocks himself out and exposes every last one of them.
  
  http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/11/29/wikileaks-julian-assange-wants-to-spill-your-corporate-secrets/
• majorspark

  

  IggyPride00;581332 wrote:The leaking of the sensitive government data I am not cool with, corporate fraud though, I hope he knocks himself out and exposes every last one of them.

  I am with you on this. His agenda aside, I don't mind if a few frauds get exposed. I hope he has a contingency plan to release them posthumously.
  
  Like you I have some mixed feeling on this as well. If Julian Assange is so gung ho about private thoughts and conversations available to the public (by theft if necessary), whether they were made by individuals in the public or private sector. I wonder what his thought would be if someone stole his personal and business conversations and thoughts. I would ask why isn't he leading by example and making all his tactics, motives, and thoughts open to the public. I am not fooled. This dude is a hypocrite with an agenda.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  Con_Alma;580533 wrote:Huh? Isn't that all of us on this board?

  
  Well, I mean I work at a DC think tank (New America Foundation) on North Korea, Iran, missiles, Middle East and nuclear weapons stuff.
  So, for example, I've been following and modeling the mysterious BM25, R27, SS-N-6 North Korean missile that was shipped to Iran. In the missile nerds and open source world, that was nothing new when it was linked. It has been reported by people like Jane's Intelligence.
  
  But, this was the first official leak that the missiles ended up being transferred to Iran. However, we have yet to see them deployed or even tested by Iran. North Korea hasn't tested them and just revealed them last month in their parade.
  
  So, that is one example of where it is nice for me to have the official info as it helps my research. Still, I fully understand the security issues.
• ou1980

  This bastard has to be living in a bunker right now...
• Belly35

  

  Is this the sign of …. future
  
  Secret documents, personal data, confidential material smeared over the internet for the intent to uphold injustices based on one individuals perspective of right. Classified memos download, copied and smuggled by socially impede individuals for profit and revenge. This is the type of educated brainless personalities created via the computer age and technology. The writing was on the wall early but nobody was watching. First the computer crash fear Y2k a test run, then spam, followed by hundreds of virus all the making of a terrorist plan. A new breed of liberal terrorist one with no morals, values or reason other that hate for no reason other that to destroy. With justification of doing what right for the world in their minds regardless of the lives that will be lost and the devastation to others. Individual like this should be hunted down like Nazi a presented in a court of military law as an example to the world … and sentence to death.
  
  I would like to blame Obama for this cluster fuck but I can’t.
  How he handles this situation will be a demonstration of his command as a world leader. I’m not very confident in his abilities to provide that leadership nor am I confident in his Administration to do anything to set a modus operandi for future action like this.
  
  This happen on your watch Obama …can’t blame Bush ..this is your rock to carry…
• tcarrier32

  

  i've looked at wikileaks as a good thing. not saying that i dont think he'll eventually get caught, but good luck with that. Seems like people dont really want to know the truth about what goes on behind closed doors.
• believer

  

  tcarrier32;581680 wrote:i've looked at wikileaks as a good thing. not saying that i dont think he'll eventually get caught, but good luck with that. Seems like people dont really want to know the truth about what goes on behind closed doors.

  There's a fine line between free access of information and things needing to remain confidential in the interest of national security and international relations. Does this mean I defend some of the asinine things our government officials do or say in confidence? No. But like it or not leaking some of these details can have dire and negative consequences for us all.
  
  The thing that really annoys me is the negative impact these types of leaks can have on our soldiers in the field and our efforts to collect intelligence data on national security threats.
  
  In this case WikiLeaks went over-the-top. This organization needs a slap down.