Pentagon scrambles to prep for 'thermonuclear' Wikileaks release

[unhappycamper]

Pentagon scrambles to prep for 'thermonuclear' Wikileaks release
By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / December 10, 2010

Perhaps more than any other organization, the Pentagon is trying to figure out what, precisely, is contained in the so-called “thermonuclear” file that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has promised to share with the world if “something happens” to him or to his staff.

With the threat of Wikileaks releases looming earlier this year, the Defense Department made the decision to create a team of some 120 intelligence analysts to cull through files that they deemed Wikileaks most likely to have in its possession.

This hasn’t been particularly difficult, since military investigators have been able to conduct forensic searches of the computer that once belonged to Private First Class Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, while he was stationed in Iraq. Pfc. Manning has been charged with providing classified material to Wikileaks and has been held in solitary confinement since July at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.

Pentagon officials explained that the team’s first order of business as it reconstructed and culled through the documents that were most likely to have been leaked was to locate informants who worked with the US military. The team, Pentagon officials said, was prepared to warn these sources if their lives were at risk as a result of being named in the Wikileaks files.

This was ultimately unnecessary, according to the Pentagon, since Wikileaks redacted the names of the informants cited in the Iraq trove of hundreds of thousands of documents released in October – something it had not done, military officials pointed out, with the release of some 91,000 Afghanistan war documents last July.

[lunatica]

1. So the Pentagon confirms that Assange redacted names to protect people

That's a good fact to have. I'm surprised the Pentagon isn't lying their asses off about this. I guess maybe if you know more is coming you must fear that lying about it now will get you in worse trouble when your lies are exposed by future information.

Has anyone even tried to debunk anything that Wikileaks has released? One way or the other this tells us something important about this story.

[Mnemosyne]

2. What I still don't understand, uc, is why a Pfc had access to so much

classified info. Whether he was an 'intelligence analyst' or not, does this make sense for a Pfc?

[unhappycamper]

3. Not really, BUT I've been out of uncle sam's army for 37 years.

A lot has changed since then.

And a lot of things haven't. :(

[Canuckistanian]

7. This was partially because of 9/11

When the complaint came out that intelligence agencies weren't talking to each other, they allowed practically ALL services and the State Dept. to share information on SIPRNet, the government's own private Internet.

So anyone with a high enough security clearance would have access to MOST diplomatic cables, secure communications and classified info.

That was a massively stupid mistake - one they'll probably be paying for for years.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

4. He was a God-damned PRIVATE. How did he have access to so many TOP SECRET documents?

[Angleae]

6. Privates can get top secret clearance too.

You don't use high ranking people to as file clerks or data entry. The background checks for the clearance are ongoing while the individual is in school. There were 2 individuals that got TS clearance when I was in tech school (admittedly, one was a complete moron, but what else can you say about someone who flunked out of a Texas A&M football scholarschip in the mid 80s).

[GliderGuider]

8. He didn't

SIPRnet is classified up to Secret only. Most of the traffic is lower level than that.

[bemildred]

5. Boy they are sure doing a lot of "scrambling" lately.

Scramble, scramble, scramble. One might almost suspect they are badly organized and incompetent.

[GliderGuider]

9. Not so much badly organized

So much as smug and self-satisfied. Which is a form of incompetence, of course.

I'm very happy to see them boiling like an anthill around Assange's stick. It points out the fact that despite the appearance they wish to cultivate, they are in fact vulnerable. I like governments to be a bit vulnerable - it helps keeps them honest.

[GliderGuider]

10. Kick

To emphasize that Wikileaks did snot do a "random" dump of unedited messages.