More Hope & Change… “Never Before Has a Superpower Lost Control of Such Vast Amounts of Sensitive Information”
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, November 28, 2010, 2:04 PM
More hope and change… The release today of 251,000 sensitive security documents is the largest leak of information of this kind in history.
The documents reportedly came from the same source-
Der Spiegel reports on the Wikileaks leaked information:
251,000 State Department documents, many of them secret embassy reports from around the world, show how the US seeks to safeguard its influence around the world. It is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.
What does the United States really think of German Chancellor Angela Merkel? Is she a reliable ally? Did she really make an effort to patch up relations with Washington that had been so damaged by her predecessor? At most, it was a half-hearted one.
The tone of trans-Atlantic relations may have improved, former US Ambassador to Germany William Timken wrote in a cable to the State Department at the end of 2006, but the chancellor “has not taken bold steps yet to improve the substantive content of the relationship.” That is not exactly high praise.
And the verdict on German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle? His thoughts “were short on substance,” wrote the current US ambassador in Berlin, Philip Murphy, in a cable. The reason, Murphy suggested, was that “Westerwelle’s command of complex foreign and security policy issues still requires deepening.”
Such comments are hardly friendly. But in the eyes of the American diplomatic corps, every actor is quickly categorized as a friend or foe. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia? A friend: Abdullah can’t stand his neighbors in Iran and, expressing his disdain for the mullah regime, said, “there is no doubt something unstable about them.” And his ally, Sheikh bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi? Also a friend. He believes “a near term conventional war with Iran is clearly preferable to the long term consequences of a nuclear armed Iran.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emissaries also learn of a special “Iran observer” in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku who reports on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari allegedly got into a heated argument with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.
A Political Meltdown
Such surprises from the annals of US diplomacy will dominate the headlines in the coming days when the New York Times, London’s Guardian, Paris’ Le Monde, Madrid’s El Pais and SPIEGEL begin shedding light on the treasure trove of secret documents from the State Department. Included are 243,270 diplomatic cables filed by US embassies to the State Department and 8,017 directives that the State Department sent to its diplomatic outposts around the world. In the coming days, the participating media will show in a series of investigative stories how America seeks to steer the world. The development is no less than a political meltdown for American foreign policy.
Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information — data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which US foreign policy is built. Never before has the trust America’s partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public — as have America’s true views of them…
The leaked documents presumably came from the same source- Private First Class Bradley Manning who was upset after a bad breakup with his boyfriend.
…As with the close to 92,000 documents on the war in Afghanistan at the end of July and the almost 400,000 documents on the Iraq war recently released, the State Department cables have also been leaked to the WikiLeaks whistleblower platform — and they presumably came from the same source. As before, WikiLeaks has provided the material to media partners to review and analyze them.
With a team of more than 50 reporters and researchers, SPIEGEL has viewed, analyzed and vetted the mass of documents. In most cases, the magazine has sought to protect the identities of the Americans’ informants, unless the person who served as the informant was senior enough to be politically relevant. In some cases, the US government expressed security concerns and SPIEGEL accepted a number of such objections. In other cases, however, SPIEGEL felt the public interest in reporting the news was greater than the threat to security. Throughout our research, SPIEGEL reporters and editors weighed the public interest against the justified interest of countries in security and confidentiality.
More…. Now We Know… Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Got Bitch-Slapped By Ali Jafari
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Published February 22, 2012 at 4:19 pm - 32 Comments
PaleRyder commented:
All under the watchful eye of sos-clinton…ag-holder and cinc- barry. Quite the incompetent tag team from hell. There does not appear to be anyone working for this nitwit in the oval office that has any part of a clue what to do.
dwd commented:
So Obama gets to preside over another UNPRECEDENTED event, however bad it may be.
Missy8s commented:
The military brass need to sanction an op with or without approval to KILL JULIAN ASANGE!
Asange is a menace to the political stability of the entire planet, KILL HIM Chairman O or are you actually supporting these leaks from the West Wing or over at State?
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ebayer commented:
The information that’s quoted here from “Der Speigel”seems really benign.
I’m sure all the world leaders are probably already aware of these atittudes.
But if it embarrasses the Obama administration—->
tarpon commented:
Obama handing out archive tapes …
Jim commented:
Missy8s said, “Asange is a menace to the political stability of the entire planet, KILL HIM Chairman O or are you actually supporting these leaks from the West Wing or over at State?”
That’s an important detail. Asange and Wikileaks aren’t leaking documents from the Russians or Chinese, because Asange & Co. know that Putin would absolutely kill them. Seriously, who is afraid of the consequences of offending Obambi & Co? I’m afraid what we’ll see in the next two years is more and more dictators and tyrants act agressively because the know Obambi will do little if anything to seriously oppose them. A lot of people are going to die because of Obambi’s incompetence and indifference.
OMG, did I just imply that Putin is a better leader than Obama?!?
wanumba commented:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emissaries…
………
What the hell is THIS sort of writing? Hillary Clinton The Queen all of a sudden?
She’s not only not queen, she’s the top official who let this happen on her watch. But she’s somehow not around anywhere…
John Cooper commented:
Manning’s Wikipedia bio asserts that he’s gay. If that’s true, what part of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” does he not understand?
wanumba commented:
We are being fed crap. These are STATE Department documents, maybe the useless fiction writers of the corrupt media could explain how a military Pvt had access to State.
WHO funds Wikileaks? That’s the ONE leak we don’t have that explains EVERYTHING. How hard is it?
Andreas K. commented:
The “leaks” about Merkel and Westerwelle are amusing. Merkel is called “Ferkel” in Germany (piglet) and “Mutti” (mommy), because of her arrogant attitude towards freedom of speech and the Germans in general. Westerwelle has been called weakling in Germany several times already.
Amazing how the US State Department comes to the same conclusions as some Germans.
King Abdullah, uhm, who’s surprised? Nuclear Iran means his comfy chair is in danger. Of course he’s not happy about Iran.
Ahmadinejad, well, it surprises me that he may have defended freedom of the press, but basically he is a tool. He’s not calling the shots in Iran. The mullahs are.
befuddled commented:
how the hell does a private get a hold of all that info. the guy goes from working at McDonalds yesterday to disseminating top secret info today. something seems very wrong.
Andreas K. commented:
But should something like this happen?
HECK NO!
Who’s in charge of storing this stuff?
If this would happen in a company, he or she would be fired within a split second. Wanna bet that, whoever is responsible, won’t get sacked cause he’s all buddy-buddy with some Democrooks?
jojo commented:
Where’s the Gov Goon Squad when you need them?
Oh wait, targeting tea partiers, veterans Christians and pro-lifers.
arnonerik commented:
How could Private First Class Bradley Manning have access to so much sensitive material. Option #1 is that he stole it. Option #2 is he had security clearance to have access. Either way how does this make us feel very secure about any of our secrets and sensitive information. We need adults in charge now. We can’t wait 2 more years.
exceller commented:
For Obama, this is truly a “mission accomplished” moment. Time to bask in the glow of the US embarrassed once again by him.
Toaster802 commented:
How could Private First Class Bradley Manning have access to so much sensitive material. Option #1 is that he stole it. Option #2 is he had security clearance to have access.
Option #3 is he was spoon fed the info and made the fall guy for the senior “officials” trying to bring hope and change in the form of America’s destruction.
Question is, what are we going to do about it?
arnonerik commented:
Our biggest security problem besides the current Democrat administration is how do you identify those who believe that any crime is permissible if it helps them achieve their personal or political goals. We used to execute spies and traitors but without that dis-incentive we had better figure out how to read minds.
aprilnovember811 commented:
These came from Obama and his infiltrators in the State Department. They are the ones putting them out. Barack Obama is the enemy. He’s one with the Weather Underground. Congress was warned, The Supreme Court was warned, lower courts were warned, the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and military. They all chose to look the other way, because they didn’t want to be called “racist.” Screw the country and over 300 million people. “It’s historic.” I blame all of them for this. They’ve failed in their duty to protect the country from all enemies foreign and domestic.
sparty commented:
So when does the DADT poster child get put in front of a wall and shot for treason?
Or does his liberalism and homosexuality make him immune from prosecution?
Paul Revere commented:
When will Obama have the cahones to act to stop this treasonous adventure? He’s no doubt worried more about the political niceties than about national security. He knows that many of the far left approve of Wikileaks, and he doesn’t want to take bold action to stop it, because it might aleinate some lefities. He has focused on nothing but 2012 from day one, and is guided by that, and that only, in every action he’s taken.
gorgo commented:
“sparty commented:
So when does the DADT poster child get put in front of a wall and shot for treason?”
Won’t happen. Best case: he’s looking at a long stretch in the cornhole house. But since he won’t consider that punishment normal men do, from his POV, it’s a win-win.
Jenny commented:
Color me skeptical; IMO this was done on purpose and sanctioned by the Obama administration.
chuck in st paul commented:
#18 November 28, 2010 at 2:46 pm – Toaster802
I really am becoming persuaded that your #3 is highly possible. It could have been an accidental security hole he found, lord knows that’s common enough. However, I find that the more this story goes on the more I smell rodent. This private has been played for a fool by Shrillary or Sir Golfsalot, perhaps both. I feel Soros’ fingers slithering around in here somewhere too.
Simon commented:
I can’t say what really happened, because I want it to work.
Simon commented:
Anyway, this is bad for Obama.
Kevin commented:
The interesting question nobody has asked is what kind of fools do we have running security of SIRPNet?
1) He should have had his clearance pulled over the crap that got him busted.
2) Was he ever really qualified for a clearance at all or did OPM (or whoever runs clearances these days) decide that to give one out anyway so they didn’t get accused of “a lack of sensitivity”?
2) He was DOWNLOADING stuff inside a SCIF and carrying it out. Where the hell was the site security manager?
3) The access logs should have shown he was the #1 or #2 ID of every user on SIRPNet accessing data, most of which he had no legitimate need to know. Didn’t ANYONE look?
It appears anyone could do this without detection (Manning was not under suspicion until a hacker called the Feds) so who else has been feeding even better stuff to the Russians or the Chinese, who will pay well for it?
Ernst Blofeld commented:
The obvious takeaway from this is that the data on the SIPRNET is heavily compromised. If one SPEC 4 did this, quite obviously other intelligence agencies, friendly and hostile, have been vacuuming up data from paid or ideologically friendly people with access, and just didn’t publish it on a web site.
memomachine commented:
Hmmmmm
So.
Gays in the military eh?
How about that.
tailgunner joe commented:
oh, i dunno. Kinda looking forward to reading some Hillery mail.
rickl commented:
The State Department has been a rat’s nest of Communist sympathizers and self-promoting opportunists running their own version of foreign policy for over 50 years. If they’re embarrassed by these revelations, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Dave commented:
Is this CINC preemptively torpedoing Hillary’s probable 2012 campaign using classified information as a throw-away?
Unlikely, but all of the players here look very bad.
egoist commented:
The next round of “peace process”, “negotiations” and “n-party talks” ought to be even more transparently useless than normal. I love how these of these dips. always come off as so sanctimonious; I wonder if the leaks will tell us of reciprocal leaks being directed from their host-country’s chef into their soup.
higgins1990 commented:
@exceller:
For Obama, this is truly a “mission accomplished” moment. Time to bask in the glow of the US embarrassed once again by him.
*****
Couldn’t agree with you more. And with the acquittal of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, it’s just another reason for Obama to extend the party in the WH!