29-07-2010, 02:56 AM
Of Leaks and Sources
![[Image: topsecretcoversheet.jpg]](http://electricpolitics.com/media/photos/topsecretcoversheet.jpg)
When I was a teenager in Paris I used to prowl around used book stores for interesting stuff. At one point I found and bought a pamphlet from the mid-nineteenth century, in French, written for field anthropologists; it being essentially a very long list of suggested questions for the natives (I'm pretty sure I've still got it in a box somewhere in the attic). One chapter had to do with how natives trade, with questions such as 'do you leave your trade goods under the banyan tree at night, and recover traded articles the next day?' — assuming that native trading partners might well be too bashful to meet face to face. This is not, we should be absolutely clear, a model for how contemporary leaks pertaining to U.S. national security take place.
Most important leaks come from in and around the top. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Older administration officials, who've had maybe twenty or thirty years experience dealing with classified information, have become somewhat blasé about what's really sensitive and what's not. Being more mature, and wise in the ways of Washington, they're also better able to establish relationships of trust with journalists. The converse is generally also true. Middle aged or older journalists can reasonably assure high-level sources that they won't be burned. There are gray areas, to be sure, but as a rule green journalists aren't meeting with green administration officials to break major leaked stories.
That is, indeed, the real problem with leaks, and it's not what people think. Because those at the top usually possess only a sketchy notion of facts and context, leaks, when they have to do with facts, are less reliable than the media makes them out to be. Nevertheless, happily, facts and political atmospherics sometimes coexist.
Such was the case in 1971 with the Pentagon papers. Daniel Ellsberg, who began as a leaker but became a whistleblower (a distinction with a difference that the mainstream media routinely fails to acknowledge regarding the Wikileaks case), distributed thousands of pages of very highly classified material all over Washington. He knew, and Washington knew, that the factual details about our failure in Vietnam were as politically damning as an ironclad charge of treason. Ellsberg's actions helped shorten the war.
Contemporary National Security leaks to reporters such as James Risen and Dana Priest, while not sensational enough (yet) to completely derail illegal programs, have seriously vexed official sponsors of endless war. It's politics by other means. Reporters seek access to and are sought out by ambitious officials. Everyone has 'skin in the game' such that it's not only impossible to plug the leaks, but nobody in Washington really wants them plugged. Let's get real: How often does Rahm Emanuel leak to the press? (The answer is, everyday.)
What's changed, sort of, is that with electronic databases an individual can download massive quantities of classified data and redistribute it easily. But that doesn't, to my mind, fundamentally change the dynamics of leaker and journalist. It's easy to look for scapegoats like the twenty something Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning but I doubt that all of a sudden a preponderance of leaks will be coming from the clerks.
Leaks are about trust and mutual self-interest. Mostly they're not a one-off with a 'go to jail' square.
Posted by George Kenney on July 28, 2010 5:30 PM
http://www.electricpolitics.com/2010/07/....html#more
[The author is a former career officer in the US State Department.]
When I was a teenager in Paris I used to prowl around used book stores for interesting stuff. At one point I found and bought a pamphlet from the mid-nineteenth century, in French, written for field anthropologists; it being essentially a very long list of suggested questions for the natives (I'm pretty sure I've still got it in a box somewhere in the attic). One chapter had to do with how natives trade, with questions such as 'do you leave your trade goods under the banyan tree at night, and recover traded articles the next day?' — assuming that native trading partners might well be too bashful to meet face to face. This is not, we should be absolutely clear, a model for how contemporary leaks pertaining to U.S. national security take place.Most important leaks come from in and around the top. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Older administration officials, who've had maybe twenty or thirty years experience dealing with classified information, have become somewhat blasé about what's really sensitive and what's not. Being more mature, and wise in the ways of Washington, they're also better able to establish relationships of trust with journalists. The converse is generally also true. Middle aged or older journalists can reasonably assure high-level sources that they won't be burned. There are gray areas, to be sure, but as a rule green journalists aren't meeting with green administration officials to break major leaked stories.
That is, indeed, the real problem with leaks, and it's not what people think. Because those at the top usually possess only a sketchy notion of facts and context, leaks, when they have to do with facts, are less reliable than the media makes them out to be. Nevertheless, happily, facts and political atmospherics sometimes coexist.
Such was the case in 1971 with the Pentagon papers. Daniel Ellsberg, who began as a leaker but became a whistleblower (a distinction with a difference that the mainstream media routinely fails to acknowledge regarding the Wikileaks case), distributed thousands of pages of very highly classified material all over Washington. He knew, and Washington knew, that the factual details about our failure in Vietnam were as politically damning as an ironclad charge of treason. Ellsberg's actions helped shorten the war.
Contemporary National Security leaks to reporters such as James Risen and Dana Priest, while not sensational enough (yet) to completely derail illegal programs, have seriously vexed official sponsors of endless war. It's politics by other means. Reporters seek access to and are sought out by ambitious officials. Everyone has 'skin in the game' such that it's not only impossible to plug the leaks, but nobody in Washington really wants them plugged. Let's get real: How often does Rahm Emanuel leak to the press? (The answer is, everyday.)
What's changed, sort of, is that with electronic databases an individual can download massive quantities of classified data and redistribute it easily. But that doesn't, to my mind, fundamentally change the dynamics of leaker and journalist. It's easy to look for scapegoats like the twenty something Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning but I doubt that all of a sudden a preponderance of leaks will be coming from the clerks.
Leaks are about trust and mutual self-interest. Mostly they're not a one-off with a 'go to jail' square.
Posted by George Kenney on July 28, 2010 5:30 PM
http://www.electricpolitics.com/2010/07/....html#more
[The author is a former career officer in the US State Department.]
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"