Dishonorable Disclosures

[W.G.Ewald]

 

[Ray]

@WGE,

When you append Youtube, you could add a note as to what it is all about.

Owing to buffering it takes time for some people.

Owing to lack of time, they tend to skip and go to another thread.

That results in some interesting discussions not taking place.

 

[SADAKHUSH]

I have seen the complete video and is worth every second of my time. I hope the present and future politicians are listening to the urgency on this matter and they will comply with it. I think it is about time for American public to unite on this one for the safety of our sons and daughters. This video is a wake up call for all of us who want to live under our flags as free and democratic citizens of our respective countries.

 

[Ray]

Could you give the gist?

I could not go beyond all that about Intelligence being essential because of buffering issues.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

@WGE,

When you append Youtube, you could add a note as to what it is all about.

Owing to buffering it takes time for some people.

Owing to lack of time, they tend to skip and go to another thread.

That results in some interesting discussions not taking place.

Understood, Sir.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Could you give the gist?

I could not go beyond all that about Intelligence being essential because of buffering issues.

Retired US military personnel in the video are cautioning the US President not to release sensitive or classified information about missions they have participated in, because of risk to the personnel involved or to future missions. The implication is that the President releases such information for his own aggrandizement and political gain.

 

[Ray]

This has come out in our newspapers on the video.

***************************

Group attacks Obama over Osama raid leak

Washington, Aug. 16: A group of former special operations and CIA officers started a campaign on Tuesday night accusing Obama of recklessly leaking information about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and other security matters to gain political advantage in a direct attack on one of President Obama's political strengths

The new group, called the Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, using shorthand for "operational security", describes itself as non-partisan, but some of its leaders have been involved in Republican campaigns and Tea Party groups. A 22-minute video called "Dishonorable Disclosures" featured on its website appears to be aimed squarely at the President, echoing charges made previously by Mitt Romney and other Republicans.

The Obama campaign immediately compared the effort to the "Swift Boat" advertisements against Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign. Like that effort, which attacked Kerry's military record in Vietnam, the Opsec site goes after Obama's strong points on national security — specifically his role in overseeing the military-CIA raid that killed Osama in May 2011.

Security officials and members of both parties in Congress have sharply criticised leaks about classified operations under Obama, and some Republicans have complained about news briefings on the Osama raid and assistance to filmmakers making a movie about the operation.

But the administration has also overseen an unprecedented number of prosecutions for press disclosures, and in June, attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. directed two US attorneys to investigate leaks discussed in the Opsec video.

Chad Kolton, who was the spokesman for the director of national intelligence in the Bush administration and now represents the Opsec group, said that because it was classified as a 501(c)(4) educational group under tax laws, it was not required to identify its donors. He said the group had raised nearly $1 million since June and intended to run television and Internet ads, as well as show the video in swing states.

Kolton rejected the comparison with the Swift Boat advertisements, saying they reflected narrow differences of opinion about Kerry's war record.

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Group attacks Obama over Osama raid leak

***************************************************

It appears that it is a Republican assisted election action!

There is no doubt Obama has got a lot of political mileage by getting Osama, while the Bush or Republican Administration was merely at "We will get him Dead or Alive" and at the same time, playing footsie with the Bin Laden family when 9/11 happened. Two terms and Bush could not get Osama.

I am no fan of Obama, but in the case of Osama, he (Obama) put his (US') money where Bush's mouth was!

And the US politicians are well know for 'motivated leaks'.

And the opposition is equally vicious to tear down the Opposition.

I always felt sorry for the way Kerry was demolished.

Also remember the Palme case where the information on the wife of a US Ambassador was leaked that she was a CIA agent by officials of the Bush Administration?

"The Leak" Still Drips of Scandal
Before 2004"²s presidential elections every American should take another look at the Bush administration's outing of an undercover CIA agent.

First, the background. In February 2002, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to Central Africa to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium in Niger in the late 1990s. Wilson found that the allegations were bogus and delivered a detailed report saying so to his superiors.

This report was either misplaced or ignored. The idea that Iraq might have nuclear capabilities was simply too politically convenient to be dropped by an administration pushing for war. The uranium charges made their way into Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address. When later exposed, they became the famous "sixteen words" emblematic of the White House's use of faulty intelligence to sell its invasion of Iraq.

Joseph Wilson stayed quiet through most of the controversy. However, after senior administration officials persisted in denying that they had prior knowledge that the intelligence about Niger was bad, Wilson published a July 6 op-ed in The New York Times discussing his trip and his report. "I gave them months to correct the record," Wilson explained to New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh, referring to the White House, "but they kept on lying."

The Bush administration was furious at Wilson's whistle-blowing. Its operatives set out to paint the Ambassador as incompetent and politically motivated. Ed Gillespie, the head of the Republic National Committee, attacked Wilson as a partisan Democrat because he had contributed funds to Al Gore's 2000 election campaign. (Gillespie neglected to mention that Wilson had also donated to George W. Bush's campaign, which he briefly supported. Moreover, Wilson had served George Bush Sr. as a special envoy to Iraq before the first Gulf War, earning high praise from Republicans and Democrats alike.)

Far worse than Gillespie's distortions, two "senior administration officials" provided a half dozen journalists with the information that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction. Only one of the journalists, conservative columnist Robert Novak, reported this fact, noting in his July 14th dispatch that the two sources "told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate."

A scandal was born. Revealing the identity of an undercover intelligence operative is a federal crime, specifically prohibited in the 1982 Identities Protection Act. Two senior administration officials are guilty.
http://www.democracyuprising.com/2004/02/the-leak-still-drips-of-scandal/

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Far worse than Gillespie's distortions, two "senior administration officials" provided a half dozen journalists with the information that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent working on weapons of mass destruction.

Comparing Valerie Plame, an analyst working at a computer in Washington, DC, to a Navy Seal on a mission in Pakistan or Afghanistan, is quite a stretch. Too much for me.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

I always felt sorry for the way Kerry was demolished.

Kerry tried to co-opt his former comrades into his presidential campaign, as well as embellishing his own service. Some of those men objected strongly.

Swift Vets and POWs for Truth - Service to Country

The purpose of this photo is to correct the misleading use of our
images -- against our will -- to further John Kerry's campaign.

 

[Ray]

Comparing Valerie Plame, an analyst working at a computer in Washington, DC, to a Navy Seal on a mission in Pakistan or Afghanistan, is quite a stretch. Too much for me.

The point is that Valerie Palme was a CIA agent, in addition to being the US Ambassador to Niger's wife.

Therefore. the disclosure apart from being a Federal Offence, also compromised the US, in that it could be taken that the Wives of Ambassadors could be CIA agents and made the US appear to be as crooked in operation and deceit as what was said of the USSR diplomats. In short, untrustworthy.

One does not give the task to find out about secret shipment of Uranium from one country to another country to a computer analyst. That is very obvious.

On October 28, 2005, the Office of Special Counsel issued a press release regarding Libby's indictment. The following is stated regarding Plame:

Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson's employment status was classified. Prior to that date, her affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. Disclosure of classified information about an individual's employment by the CIA has the potential to damage the national security in ways that range from preventing that individual's future use in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who deal with them, the indictment states.Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 reportedly told Linzer: "You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources."

Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work: "You'll never get a straight answer [from the Agency] about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were."

On September 6, 2006, David Corn published an article for The Nation titled "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA", reporting that Plame was placed in charge of the operations group within the Joint Task Force on Iraq in the spring of 2001 and that, "when the Novak column ran," in July 2003: "Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator — to rise up a notch or two — and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again

If Palme was a mere computer analyst then when the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) attempted to have the transcript of Cheney's interview with the special prosecutor released, the release would not be opposed by the Bush administration, which opposed it. That Cheney was the worst type of a crook is known to the whole world and that Bush was just a fall guy.

If the Valerie was just a technician, then Lewis "Scooter" Libby would not have been sentenced to 30 months in prison, a fine of US$250,000, and two years of probation (supervised release) after the expiration of his prison term.

It is Libby's good luck that Bush On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted the sentence. No pardon was given, even though Cheney pressed for it many a time with Bush, and the fine and probation, as well as the felony conviction remain.

(The information given is from various sources)


On the issue of which is more important to national security a Navy Seal or a CIA agent, I take it both are important and both play a different role to ensure National Security.

 

[Ray]

Kerry tried to co-opt his former comrades into his presidential campaign, as well as embellishing his own service. Some of those men objected strongly.

Swift Vets and POWs for Truth - Service to Country

The problem with the US Army is that it puts its political party affiliation, and take it to any extent and is above unit cohesiveness and camaraderie.

Take this video Dishonorable Disclosure.

What new are they saying about the importance of keeping Intelligence an Opsec? But the way they are appearing on the Video, it appears as if they are John the Baptist, preaching the Gospel Truth!

I think great work has been done in favour of the US by disclosing parts of the Operation against Osama BL.

1. It has stopped making US appear to be a joke, which is only hot air and no more - we will get him dead or alive!
Well, the so called leaks proved to the world that yes, indeed, the US gets its man and it is not merely hot air and hyperbole! Therefore. after 9/11 and the Iraq War, where the world was taking the US to be a spent force, the Osama operation proved that it was not a spent force at all. That is why none takes the Drone attacks on Pakistan Taliban to be another of the US' mindless bravado and instead that it is serious business.

2. Or that the US in the SCS is not merely playing Battleships, but can be a real source for concern for China and a bulwark of safety for the smaller nations of the SCS.

3. The operation on Osama proved that the US has gadgetry that can blank out radars wherein the US can penetrate a country's airspace with impunity. A thing that cannot be taken lightly by US' enemies.

4. Conversely, it proved that the Pakistan Army, Air Force, ISI and Govt to be full of chumps who could not defend their country. The lowering of credibility of these organisations and institutions punctured the cavalier attitude of average Pakistanis that they could defend and protect all their coreligionists of the Taliban!

There are many good that has come out in favour of the US by this so called leaks.

But then the US elections will be US election and all the dirty linen and all dirty tricks and under the belt manoeuvres will be played out, till one of the chaps sits in the Oval Office and gloat how he outdirtied the other guy and his campaign!

 

[Ray]

The US elections will affect the US citizens directly.

It will only marginally affect the world.

You would know better what is good for your country than I.

I was merely giving a point of view how some in the world view the US elections or the way how it becomes a real cock fight or bull terrier fight pit where there is no holds barred to ruin reputations and lives!

Everyone is not so graceful as John McCain.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

The US elections will affect the US citizens directly.

It will only marginally affect the world.

You would know better what is good for your country than I.

I was merely giving a point of view how some in the world view the US elections or the way how it becomes a real cock fight or bull terrier fight pit where there is no holds barred to ruin reputations and lives!

Everyone is not so graceful as John McCain.

John McCain's graciousness may have cost him the election. :-(