Another case of certain people being “overlooked” by the government and not investigated unless/until there is pressure from the citizenry to do so.
Browsing Posts tagged pentagon
Wikileaks has released 92,201 records pertaining to Afghanistan, including intelligence reports and paramilitary operations. In the leak, Pakistan is identified as an insurgent ally.
Wikileaks editor Julian Assange, in an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News said he believes this is “the most comprehensive history of a war ever to be published – during the course of the war”.
The Afghan War Diary an extraordinary secret compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports describe the majority of lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.
The White House is condemning the release. No surprise there.
Reaction in Washington political circles is already beginning. The Times posted a White House memo to reporters sent Sunday evening, without naming which Obama aide wrote it, seeking to downplay the disclosure as not surprising, and saying that “Wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes U.S. policy in Afghanistan.” And Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, said the release demonstrates that “calibrations” to the U.S. policy toward Afghanistan were necessary.
The time line and spin from the White House at the New York Times.
The Guardian has an interactive map detailing events related to the leak. They have some of the best coverage detailing the events and the leak.
Channel 4 has several stories and the video below about the unseen Afghan war.
CNN has an article. If CNN does what it usually does, there will be pentagon officials speaking on the news about how bad the leak is and not discussing what’s actually in the leak.
Boing Boing has a story with several links to other places to read and digest the information.
Spiegel also has a story and some photos.
Glenn Greenwald wrote a piece last week about the motives behind the whistle-blower prosecutions. It’s highly relevant to this story.
Reddit also has a very lively discussion on the matter.
WikiLeaks is down at the moment, unable to sustain the weight of the hits it’s receiving over this current leak. The documents in question can be found here and a dedicated website for the information can be found here. In the meantime, you can also grab a torrent of the files and download it. This will help decrease the load on the WikiLeaks page.
One of the more interesting aspects to this entire story is the recurrent question of why does WikiLeaks now do the investigative journalism that the newspapers should be doing? Yes, they are reporting on the story, but it is WikiLeaks that is gathering information and it is Julian Assange that is putting his ass on the line. Granted, he had some major help from places, such as the Guardian, in figuring out what it was that he had, but regular journalists used to perform this task. WikiLeaks essentially become the middleman as the newspapers are afraid to take a stand. Still, credit needs to be given to the Guardian for taking a small stand and sifting through and categorizing the information and helping Assange.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the quagmire that is Afghanistan should be reading this. Then, consider donating to WikiLeaks so they can continue their work.
Federal investigators have identified several dozen Pentagon officials and contractors with high-level security clearances who allegedly purchased and downloaded child pornography, including an undisclosed number who used their government computers to obtain the illegal material, according to investigative reports.
The investigations have included employees of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — which deal with some of the most sensitive work in intelligence and defense — among other organizations within the Defense Department.
The Pentagon has been accused of spying on a whistleblower website that specialises in leaking top secret documents. The US Army has already labeled the website as a security threat. Now Wikileaks – which won Amnesty Internationals news media award last year – has issued a statement claiming its editors are being investigated: WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation, – the claim published on Tweeter said.
WikiLeaks has built their reputation of breaking extremely important stories, so it’s hard to put a conspiracy theory label on this story. Given the fact that the CIA is involved, we should be watching this story closely. We’ll have to wait to find out on April 5th what’s going on.
You can follow what’s happening on WikiLeaks’ twitter account or their website. If you feel so inclined, you can donate to WikiLeaks here (scroll to the bottom of the page).
More information at Wired, Gawker, and Harper’s Magazine.
