First, the WikiLeaks series, initiated by US military officer Chelsea Manning, revealed the chaos at the heart of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Edward Snowden’s massive secret archive exposed the US government’s illegal surveillance campaign against its own people. Over the past week, we’ve seen another collection of classified documents infuriate US intelligence. Frank Ledwidge, a well-known British lawyer and former military officer, writes about this in his article for the Guardian.
Of the three sets of leaks, he says, the latest is the least politically damaging on its own, but it demonstrates again that this dangerous, self-created and ongoing wormhole is at the heart of the entire US intelligence system. And this consists of a combination of excessive secrecy and at the same time wide access to classified documents. Ledwidge believes the leak shows a confused attitude in the United States toward information management. One wonders why a young reserve pilot from Massachusetts, if he was the source of the leaks, “should know” about Ukrainian plans to strike Russia or the political machinations of Israeli intelligence services.
On the one hand, US military and intelligence officials have a serious, almost paranoid habit of overclassified information, treating military intelligence almost as much as truly classified documents. As CIA Director William Burns said, “there is a serious problem of excessive secrecy”.
On the other hand, the publication notes, the situation is aggravated by a system that sends this classified information to a large number of people with access to classified data. An incredible 1.2 million US government employees have access to top secret information. Another 1.6 million can read documents that are simply “secret”. The real surprise is how few major leaks have happened in the US, says the expert.
The motivations of Manning, Snowden and the man behind the latest leaks may differ. What they have in common is that everyone was happy to have their material released. Literally everyone knows the contents of what leaked on the network. At the same time, really serious leaks are not disclosed by anyone. They are kept in a very, very secret place. It very well could have happened, we just don’t know. And instead of screaming about the latest embarrassment and looking for someone to blame, the US intelligence “community” should be busy fixing the systemic vulnerabilities it has created for itself, Ledwidge concluded.
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