There have been suggestions from the more conspiracy-theoretic end of the spectrum that Wikileaks may be a CIA front. After this latest “leak”, I think it’s pretty obvious. I saw this news item on CNN which is what tipped me off that it must be “safe for public consumption.” If it’s safe for public consumption, it sure isn’t a leak that’s worth a damn. Why would someone go to all the risk to themselves and their career to submit Secret clearance docs that get handed around to thousands of people? It doesn’t make sense. And why would the only really sensitive documents finger the ISI? Isn’t the point of leaking to blow the whistle on your boss?? This seems like a rather transparent attempt to put public pressure on ISI to reduce their support for the Taliban while pretending that it was an uncontrolled “leak”. What also doesn’t make sense is where Wikileaks gets its money. If Wikileaks really were the grassroots organization it makes itself out to be, it seems to me they’d have to be hosted on peer-to-peer networks since it’s expensive to maintain servers and bandwidth to permit millions of people to download videos and libraries-worth of documents from your website.
And Wikileaks’s Top-10 successes aren’t anything to get excited about. Probably the most substantial item was the CRU emails that were supposedly “hacked” by Russian teenagers or something. I have a working hypothesis that the April 20th Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion was actually a retaliatory strike against whoever was really behind the CRU leaks. If CIA is aligned with US oil interests (likely), then this makes sense… the Deepwater Horizon explosion would materially damage offshore drilling in the Gulf and put the hurt on the interests backing CIA that defected and derailed the Copenhagen agreement.
They said that the video that they recently released cost them like $50,000 to get and distribute. I think that they also said that the next video that they plan to release probably will cost even more than that. I don’t think that anyone ever tried to pretend that they were poor or something. They apparently have a lot of money to work with.
And I don’t know about the other stuff that they have released, but I am pretty sure that they in part used peer-to-peer networks to distribute their last video.
What do you think about the video that they recently released? Why exactly would it be a good thing for the government to release a video like that?
Not so sure this could be another “Trojan Horse”. After all it’s well known the US government has been trying to further extend the war in Pakistan. And if your superior says you must find evidence linking the powerful ISI to the “Taliban” [as ISI rightly pointed out Taliban as a faction do not exist anymore: many former members have joined the Emirate of Afghanistan or similar, more secular organizations], you will find evidence, got it? You don’t want to end your carreer in Fort Turnip guarding rotting tank hulls.
And what better way to give credibility to your documents than “allowing” them to be leaked out? People don’t pay attention anymore to CNN depicting Ahmadinejad as the next coming of Hitler, even when mainstream will go all way to concoct outlandish story like the ayatollahs proclaiming a fatwa on dogs, but people will pay attention to what WikiLeaks has to say. I am not very smart but I arrived to this conclusion as soon as I saw the news…
The video was already the subject of a FOIA request. I can imagine a Pentagon/CIA strategy session as follows:
It is possible they might win the FOIA request and we will be forced to release the video or at least portions of it
Just being forced to release it makes it look like we’re hiding things
The people that are after the video are not casual, they are lit on fire because it was AP employees who got killed… that means anybody carrying a camera will want this video released
If we just release it, they’ll ask for more
If we are ordered by a court to release it or portions of it, they’ll be encouraged to file even more FOIA requests
The ideal scenario would be to leak it
But if somebody just leaks it like that, it would be a major scandal and the Senate oversight committee will be after our lives to explain how such a serious breach of security could occur
I know! Let’s say the Devil (Julian Assange) did it! Then we can heap all the public ire on Assange and then the Senate oversight committee won’t care and they won’t start shoving a microscope up our nether regions
It’s just a hypothesis but I can imagine a calculation like this.
Ultimately, no. But I think the Pentagon is much more sensitive to media perceptions than it was during the Vietnam War, that is, I think the Pentagon considers active management of US popular opinion (propaganda) about its actions as an integral component of its “strategy”. So, planning for an invasion of Iraq is not as simple as just figuring what tank divisions will drive where but how the discussion of the war will be managed in the public consciousness. Public protest can end a war even if that is not “in the interests of the US” (translation: “in the interests of the Pentagon”), as it did Vietnam, so carefully nipping in the bud news items which have the potential to be war-ending is important. If the FOIA request for this video were denied, that itself could become a viral news item. Now that it’s already out there, nobody cares what the verdict is in the FOIA case. So, yeah, it could be a way of preventing popular opinion from dislodging and turning into an avalanche of protest.
The famous Wikileaks video is not shocking, in the sense that there are plenty of videos like it on Youtube. It’s not like it showed Bush personally executing someone. Also, what is really suspicious is that Wikileaks sent advanced copies of the leaks to major news agencies. That’s totally a government move. If you are Wikileaks, why would you give the MSM first crack at the leaks? Why not give it to antiwar.com or others similar?
I haven’t read every bit of news on this but it seems pretty much like a fleshing out and summary of what has appeared on antiwar.com for many years. I’m not surprised at all. What am I missing here? Is it merely a repackaging of what the alternative press has long reported or is there something completely new and shocking?
The consequences of denying a FOIA request to the AP are potentially much worse than denying FOIA requests to people you can smear (and which the MSM will assist you in smearing) as “conspiracy theorists” or “peaceniks”. Denying the FOIA request to the AP could set up a groundswell of anti-Pentagon sentiment within the AP rank-and-file, which is exactly the last thing the Pentagon wants. They want to keep reporters fat, dumb and embedded.
Maybe im missing something about this specific case but I thought the msm didn’t ever go after subversive stories. Because they’re not interested and because the government will take away their privileges, such as no reporters allowed to cover the war first hand or get interviews with heads of state.
I ask because my dad has submitted tons of FOIA requests, and you have to request specific documents by title, and then they check their records, and then either say “yeahh we didnt find anything” or “sorry its classified…”. FOIA is just meant to look liberal. Its PR for the state but in reality does nothing.
@Sieben: Your Dad isn’t the AP. Denying that FOIA request could have caused an insurrection among AP reporters (which might spread to other media organizations). Granting the FOIA request would be problematic because it would reduce the number of counter-arguments they have to shoot down FOIA requests with (such as, “it’s an operational theater and releasing this video will give operational details to the enemy” and so on). If you release the video under FOIA, you’re admitting that some videos can be released to the public. That would likely spur a flurry of new FOIA requests. But now that the video is out there, they can deny the FOIA request with little consequence. Now that the AP rank-and-file have seen the video, what’s the point in getting upset if the FOIA request is denied? If my hypothesis is correct, the Pentagon has stemmed an MSM insurrection and managed to avoid stimulating a surge of new FOIA requests (and has avoided reducing the strength of its counter-arguments against granting FOIA requests).