WikiLeaks Releases Hundreds of Thousands of Classified Documents in Defiance of U.S.

[KillShot]

Some of the diplomatic papers stolen from the State Department and leaked Sunday by Wikileaks show more than just potentially embarrassing revelations about U.S. views of allies but disturbing developments among alleged friends as well as foes and competitive states.

The details from the cables being released -- among 250,000 illegally taken from secret State Department records -- include discussions on the U.S. being unable to stop Syrian arms to Hezbollah, its disappointment in Qatar to stop funding terrorism and hacking by the Chinese government of U.S. computers

Samples of some of the thousands of documents that were to be released by Wikileaks Sunday night began leaking out midday after the German newspaper Der Spiegel and The New York Times released excerpts earlier than planned.

The Wikileaks website tweeted out a copy of an article that appeared on the Gawker website taken out of Der Spiegel, which posted copies of its newspaper ahead of time. Moments later The New York Times released some of the details of documents it had acquired. The Guardian followed suit.

The massive dump began after Wikileaks announced that it had been the victim of a "denial of service" attack but that it was still releasing documents via its international newspaper partners.

Wikileaks announced Sunday morning via Twitter that it was "currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," which shuts down access to the site, but "El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down The Obama administration has told whistle-blower WikiLeaks that its expected imminent release of classified State Department cables will put "countless" lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize U.S. relations with its allies.

Source - Fox News

Related Story - Fox News - U.S.: WikiLeaks Release Endangers 'Countless' Lives

 

[DirtyDawg]

Hopefully, at some point, the release of these documents will bring light to all of the meddling that the U.S. does in foreign countries. Then, maybe our elected officials will be forced to change their foreign policy of sending our troops into conflict for the purpose of conquest and profit.

 

[UnSafe]

The release of the data puts the sources and methods of information collection at big risk. Sources and methods that take years and sometimes lifetimes to develop.

Although much of the newsworthy stuff appears as "Dirty laundry", no country is squeaky clean when it comes to international activity. Kind of like the sausage analogy- "Everyone likes sausage, but few like to witness the making of sausage".

Like it or not, it hurts our country. And if it hurts our country, you can bet smart guys are working late to plan courses of action to resolve it. "What" happens, reflects in part, the huevos of our CIC.

 

[LightningCrash]

The release of the data puts the sources and methods of information collection at big risk. Sources and methods that take years and sometimes lifetimes to develop.

I haven't read any of the documents so I can't vouch for the collection. Could go into more detail?

 

[Nraman]

I haven't read any of the documents so I can't vouch for the collection. Could go into more detail?

I can help with that.
DCI Panetta says so.

 

[Glocktogo]

Most all non signals intelligence is collected by humint, or "on the ground" sources. Leaked classified information that was gathered by these sources is often single source or "he was the only other guy in the room when that was said" stuff. If a foreign government or terrorist discovers material in those wikileaks that could only have come from sources close to them, thos people are likely to wind up dead. This shuts off the tap on additional information and is bad for future intel business for the US. Who wants to give us info if they know it may wind up on the internet, getting them killed in the process?

This doesn't even take into account how much more dangerous it is for our operators to work in the enemy's midst.

 

[KOPBET]

Hey, if you can't protect your secrets, you're in bad shape.

 

[JB Books]

And it's not like our HUMINT resources are not already piss poor...

Most all non signals intelligence is collected by humint, or "on the ground" sources. Leaked classified information that was gathered by these sources is often single source or "he was the only other guy in the room when that was said" stuff. If a foreign government or terrorist discovers material in those wikileaks that could only have come from sources close to them, thos people are likely to wind up dead. This shuts off the tap on additional information and is bad for future intel business for the US. Who wants to give us info if they know it may wind up on the internet, getting them killed in the process?

This doesn't even take into account how much more dangerous it is for our operators to work in the enemy's midst.

 

[Glocktogo]

And it's not like our HUMINT resources are not already piss poor...

Word!

 

[vvvvvvv]

And it's not like our HUMINT resources are not already piss poor...

Maybe putting piss poor HUMINT resources at risk will cause us to use better sources rather than just the lowest-priced source.