DoD Study Contradicts Charges Against WikiLeaks 228
Voline writes "Last Summer, after WikiLeaks released 90,000 leaked internal US military documents in their Afghan War Log, Pentagon officials went on a media offensive against WikiLeaks, accusing it of having the 'blood on Its hands' of American soldiers and Afghan collaborators who are named in the documents. The charge has echoed through the mainstream media (and Internet comment threads) ever since. Now, CNN is reporting that after a thorough Pentagon review, 'WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded.' And, according to an unnamed NATO official, 'there has been no indication' that any Afghans who have collaborated with the NATO occupation have been harmed as a result of the leaks. Will the Pentagon's contradiction of the charges against WikiLeaks get as much play in the media as those original accusations did?"
Wikileaks download (Score:4, Interesting)
A bit off topic but... anyone knows if there is a way to download all wikileaks documents? I would really like to save that locally
Re:It doesn't sell. (Score:5, Interesting)
And more accurately, while this will get extremely little to no press, we'll still constantly be hearing character assassinate stories. Crap like, "I would totally be behind wikileaks but I hear Assange is a total tool", as if the only way someone can support what an organization does is if the members of the organization are saints.
These kind of comments are no less trolls/flamebaits than comments like "I'd totally use OpenBSD but Theo de Raadt is a meanie.", yet I see them modded insightful every time there's a wikileaks story.
What about? (Score:3, Interesting)
the financial and legal measures taken against him/them.
Oh! Gee, sorry about the muck you got drug through........
Re:Pentagon Reaction Was Self Preservation Mode (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also fascinating how they managed to entirely blame wikileaks.
The new york times and the guardian mirrored a lot of the material too and took part in organizing the data before the public release yet everything was wikileaks fault.
They military couldn't keep it's secrets secret but it was the fault of whoever the documents were sent to, not whoever was supposed to keep them secret.
I wonder how it would have gone had he anonymously posted a USB stick to the guardian or another big name newspaper directly rather than going through wikileaks.
They might have silenced it but they might not.
would we be seeing the newspapers vilified in the same way.
Re:It doesn't sell. (Score:0, Interesting)
No, I still think he's a tool for the following reasons:
1. The leaked (lol) internal messages between Assange and other Wikileaks members, which out him as hypocritical, power-hungry and generally an asshole. Dispute this all you want, the messages are out there for everybody to read, courtesy of the Cryptome guy and a few other Wikileaks members who, prior to this last incident HAVE DISSOCIATED THEMSELVES FROM ASSANGE. Yes, the people who know him and his agenda best have fled from his presence.
2. Multiple counts on how he chose to handle "Collateral Murder." First of all, by naming it Collateral Murder. This is Fox News-level editorial framing. Second, NO, THE ORIGINAL VIDEO WAS NEVER RELEASED. The 631 megabyte file is not the original file format that might have aided any sort of independent investigation. It's downsampled in quality and resolution, encoded in a different video format, and shrunk down in a giant black video frame. congratulations, the video quality is shit, and all original artifacts of the original video have been lost in the re-encoding. RELEASE THE FUCKING FILE. Pirate Bay, the bittorrent protocol and the Internet aren't gonna run out of fucking space.
You know what? I don't like Assange. I don't trust him, based on his own actions. I think a service like Wikileaks is important and I do not question the value of the materials already released.
These opinions are completely separate from how much I trust the US government. My opinion is someone who isn't a giant ass and can credibly claim transparency should be running Wikileaks. How about that?
Re:Pentagon Reaction Was Self Preservation Mode (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a military veteran and I may have authored some of the documents that were leaked. But pretty much all of the information was already publicly available in some form or another. We all knew Pakistan was playing a double game. We all knew that the CIA was operating secret drones along the boarder - who else could it be, the Mongolians? If you drop a bomb on somebody, you can keep it secret from the press, but everybody on the ground will know about it. It just takes a little investigative journalism to get at the truth.
A lot of this was already in the press as well. Which leads me to wonder what the smoking gun was supposed to be. Exactly what was the big story that justified publishing this material? It could have been more corroborating evidence to back up speculation and other sources on these stories. And if so - why not limit the information to specifically those topics?
The fact that these events were taking place isn't going to be a secret - as you've noted. However, the details to how things are done might be. Some of those reports look like they contain operational details that may or may not be gleened by opposing forces. In which case, Wikileaks did present intelligence and the US Military should be upset.
The main problem the Pentagon has is one of credibility. The fact that a low level intelligence clerk could smuggle out many GBs of classified documents while lip syncing to Lady Gaga makes the military and the entire chain of command look like a bunch of incompetent boobs. It just goes to show that WallMart has better protection against shoplifters than the military has against internal leaks. So the initial reaction is one of self-preservation. "If you leak this, people will die." Which is another way of saying, we royally screwed up and we're placing the blame on you because we don't want to be the ones getting busted over this. I am no longer in the military, so I can speak my mind on this. I still think Julian Assange is an idiot, but that's another topic.
The blame game rears its ugly head in almost any bureaucracy. The military is a bureaucractic force in to itself. To be sure - that's part of the story. But Manning (if he is the sole source) wasn't just some soldier from the motor pool wandering off with a book of military secrets. Manning was an intelligence analyst with access and a need to know. Although, if the story is to be believed, the huge question is why this system had a CD burner installed when supposedly these systems already have USB ports disabled to prevent data being transferred via thumbdrives.
There's certainly some blame to go around in this case. However, I don't believe the entire story is simply smoke and mirrors to cover up someone's ineptitude. There is still intelligence value in the raw data. And Wikileaks' goal is to publish that data.
Re:Hmmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)
As a tax payer... (Score:5, Interesting)
,,,I want the option to write off any contribution I make to Wikileaks to be tax deductable.
My rational is quite simple and direct. For the people, by the people....... So damn't it... I want to know what I'm paying for as its bad enough that I don't have a choice what the taxes I pay are used for.
As to the idea of harm being done, the fact of teh matter is of course there is harm being done by the massive waring mindset budgets of which the funds could most certainly be better spend on removing reasons for war, instead of creating reasons.
Re:It doesn't sell. (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_laden#Criminal_charges [wikipedia.org]
It wasn't until after the bombing of Afghanistan began in October 2001 that the Taliban finally did offer to turn over Osama bin Laden to a third-party country for trial, in return for the US ending the bombing and providing evidence that Osama bin Laden was involved in the 9/11 attacks. This offer was rejected by George W Bush stating that this was no longer negotiable with Bush responding that "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty."