So it appears the conviction and abuse of Chelsea Manning served no purpose other than to fulfill our sadistic tendencies and send a message to others, because her leaks did nothing to harm American interests:
In the seven years since WikiLeaks published the largest leak of classified documents in history, the federal government has said they caused enormous damage to national security.
But a secret, 107-page report, prepared by a Department of Defense task force and newly obtained by BuzzFeed News, tells a starkly different story: It says the disclosures were largely insignificant and did not cause any real harm to US interests.
Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Iraq-related military documents and State Department cables provided by the Army private Chelsea Manning, the report assessed “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”
The report also determined that a different set of documents published the same year, relating to the US war in Afghanistan, would not result in “significant impact” to US operations. It did, however, have the potential to cause “serious damage” to “intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population,” and US and NATO intelligence collection efforts. The most significant impact of the leaks, the report concluded, would likely be on the lives of “cooperative Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors.”
You can read the document here.
The leaks exposed this, which I guess we just weren’t supposed to know about.
America, fuck yeah.
The folks at LGM say this article and I are full of shit.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’d really like to not hate my own country, but I’m finding it awfully hard this last year or so.
marduk
Manning’s treatment was inexcusable but Buzzfeed’s representation of the report is bullshit.
Davis X. Machina
Thank God. They’re just foreigners.
The Moar You Know
If Snowden came back to the US tomorrow I bet Trump gives him a medal.
hellslittlestangel
Only if we understand “American interests” to exclude the lives of non-Americans:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2017/06/no-americans-killed#respond
rikyrah
Kushner’s Office of American Innovation Is Cribbing Obama’s Ideas
by Nancy LeTourneau
June 20, 2017 1:30 PM
Over the last couple of weeks, the White House has been trying to master the art of the tiny. First came Infrastructure Week, then it was Workforce Development Week and yesterday they launched Technology Week. The irony is that Jared Kushner is behind most of it via his Office of American Innovation and he seems to be busy cribbing Obama’s ideas.
Last week I noted that for workforce development, the White House is focusing almost exclusively on apprenticeships, something that was a big push from Obama’s Labor Department via Secretary Tom Perez. It’s also true that many of the infrastructure projects being highlighted by Kushner—like high speed rail and broadband access—were major priorities for the Obama administration.
For Technology week, here’s what they announced yesterday:
That’s all well and good…except for the part about providing “citizen services in a way that has never happened before.” Color me surprised (not) that Kushner didn’t mention that it was the Obama administration that created the U.S. Digital Service, whose mission is “to deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design.”
We know that Kushner is aware of this service because just prior to the inauguration in January he sent this email to Todd Park, Obama’s chief technology officer:
Major Major Major Major
Forgive me, but I think I’ll wait for somebody like Adam to opine on this.
TenguPhule
Sorry Cole, you’re wrong. People’s lives were endangered and probably ended thanks to Traitor Manning and her Russian friends.
I agree she shouldn’t have been in solitary. They should have used a firing squad.
Keith P.
I blame Chelsea Manning for that Julian Assange movie. LOCK HER UP!
hovercraft
This is proof that we over classify shit to avoid transparency. I remember seeing a report a few years ago that said the something like 60% of the stuff that we classify doesn’t need to be classified, our institutions just like to keep shit to themselves, to avoid criticism and embarrassment.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
It’s hard not to, between our fellow moronic citizens and the too often dumb and or malicious shit our government does.
ETA: All that said, I don’t really think that it should be left to some whistle blower to dump all that shit, we got lucky, but as others have said, only if you’re only counting Americans.
Laura
IMHO, the unnecessary and punitive prison sentence was to send a clear message – that the American public was not, and is not entitled to know what is done in our name.
Otherwise, we may have the temerity to say no to the next grand adventure to send some people’s children off to die if for no other reason than to enrich the military industrial infotainment complex.
Also, they do not hate us for our (dwindling) freedoms. They hate us because we come and blow up their communities and their loved ones.
Oatler.
Verily thou art a Corporation that hidest thyself, O Corporation of America, the Savior.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
D
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: eh, that one was fine until the last sentence.
hovercraft
President Donald Trump engaged in an astounding bit of Twitter diplomacy :
Wow!
low-tech cyclist
@Major Major Major Major:
Well, that’s a change in a positive direction. I approve!
What I still want to know is: when are heads going to roll because low-level people like Manning and Snowden have access to these immense troves of documents? The answer is, apparently never.
Here at the government statistical agency I work for, ISTM that we do a much better job at restricting file access to a ‘need to know’ basis than the DOD or the NSA and their contractors do.
Going after Snowden and Manning and the like is ultimately security theater, if nobody higher up gets burned as well.
trollhattan
Think I first saw that video right here and it sickens me just as much today as back then. Is it any wonder when we give out attaboys after mission fuckups like this, that cops are encouraged to shoot any time they feel the teensiest threatened? It’s baked into our psyches.
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No one could steer me right but China tried, China tried
So this is a precursor to exactly what?
hovercraft
Last night irony died.
Hannity compares Russia investigation to birtherism
Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday compared the investigation into possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia to the “birtherism” conspiracy theory that claims former President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Speaking to Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow on his show, Hannity accused Trump’s critics of pursuing the Russia investigation with the same fanaticism as “birther” conspiracy theorists.
“This has now become, like, ‘Russia-Trump-conspiracy-birther-conspiracy,'” Hannity said as he began the interview.
“Right,” Sekulow agreed………..
These fucking people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
D58826
From Vox
D58826
@hovercraft: well my post went off into electronic limbo but here is a bit more from Vox. They seems to be totally confused
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/6/20/15841740/trump-north-korea-china-tweet-what
schrodingers_cat
@Davis X. Machina: They are chopped liver, I guess.
D58826
and are we tired of winning yet?
Maybe Jared and Ivanka are going to China next week for the ribbon cutting ceremony.
http://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2017/06/20/ford-import-focus-china/411600001/
And a bit more about all of that winning ‘If Ford is picking China over Mexico, that’s bad for US jobs b/c Mexico cars tend to have higher % of US parts’ https://twitter.com/davidluhnow/status/877169181837459456
hovercraft
So much WINNING !!
From the NYT
Who knew that Twitler was such a big fan of China’s, first he killed the TPP, and now he kills off jobs in Mexico to give then to China. that will really help keep those brown people down there!
ETA: 22
D58826 says:
June 20, 2017 at 4:02 pm
and are we tired of winning yet?
Damn you, shakes fist.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Major Major Major Major: Was going to say something to TenguPhule’s comment at #8, but held my tongue
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: Then all the work will go to CSC, Lockheed and the other usual suspects, and we will be…exactly where we are now. Amazon, Google, Apple et al. will never touch that work. It is, strange to say, not profitable enough. And the regulations are far too onerous to navigate unless you’re already in the business and know how it works.
I’ve worked government IT and software development. Far from saving money, if Trump wants early 00’s levels of service, performance and reliability he’s going to have to spend a trillion more, not “save” it. The reason government IT is in the state it’s in is because of government’s procurement process, and that’s totally fucked up because of the “taxpayer advocate” types, who want every dime tracked so none of it is spent of anyone undeserving. This literally adds about 400% to what services would cost otherwise. And that’s across the board: IT, the military, any Federal government service that uses contractors.
So why have contractors? If you don’t:
1. All your costs are on the books and can’t be buried in Congressional budgets, out of sight of the public.
2. You have to pay salaries and benefits competitive with the private sector, or provide a pension, union and job security to make up the difference.
3. You can’t get an awesome post-procurement job working for the people you used to give money to.
That’s how the sausage is made, folks. It’s pretty gruesome.
tpherald
You’re a big fan of not jailing someone who knowingly commits a crime, then?
TenguPhule
@hovercraft:
I foresee a new drinking game in the making.
catclub
@Davis X. Machina: Based on the first three responses, I figured it was DougJ trolling the BJ readers.
Stan
@low-tech cyclist:
Yup, I agree.
However, I also agree on her jailing. Privates don’t get to decide which stuff gets shared with the public. That’s pretty important to the lives of lots of other privates.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@D58826: China First! ????
jl
Off Topic, but some moderate GOPers just asked for grrandmotherly loving kindness of interested and concerned constituent attention re Senate health care bill.
Topher Spiro
@TophirSpiro
I’m hearing at least 7 no’s coming out of the lunch: Capito, Collins, Cruz, Lee, Murkowski, Paul, Sasse. Heller, Cassidy, Portman undecided.
https://twitter.com/TopherSpiro/status/877250763373907968
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Yeah, my response to you was a response to what you’d written pre-edit. But enough on the topic.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: I’m not a fan of people who knowingly put the lives of the Iraqis and others who risked everything to help us when we didn’t deserve their help. The deaths they face if caught are the stuff of nightmare and Manning was playing with their fucking lives.
cervantes
“It did, however, have the potential to cause “serious damage” to “intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population,” and US and NATO intelligence collection efforts. The most significant impact of the leaks, the report concluded, would likely be on the lives of “cooperative Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors.”
Why do you think this is okay?
Jay S
@Davis X. Machina: You did notice that this referred to “a different set of documents released in the same year” didn’t you? Not the Manning documents, apparently.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@The Moar You Know:
Sounds like bullshit corporate speak
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
Tell me about it. Worse, we end up paying for shit that’s already outdated when it arrives because of the time it takes the bid to process.
catclub
@jl: wow. my catchphrase, though, is: Important if true.
NCSteve
Cole, I love ya, man. But please don’t cite to the version of the footage that Assange edited to make a pretty clear case of fog of war mistaken identity look like an assassination and then tell me it was harmless. Assange’s entire purpose for existence, as is his site’s, is to do harm to the United States. If he was really interested in letting all the bits and bytes fly free, he wouldn’t be O’Keefing them into propaganda videos.
http://gawker.com/5515720/stephen-colbert-grills-wikileaks-founder-on-helicopter-video
https://mic.com/articles/45975/collateral-murder-youtube-video-u-s-apache-attack-at-heart-of-bradley-manning-trial#.GEOIhcdA0
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
Not really bullshit. The problem is you can only work towards ONE of them, all of them are mutually exclusive goals.
catclub
@cervantes: This is what the first three responders here, and an entire LGM thread are discussing.
‘No Americans were harmed’ is not necessarily the standard by which to judge events, but we usually do it that way.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@TenguPhule: Neither am I. But it’s still possible to not think that person deserves to be shot to death
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Agreed. Cole’s flat-out wrong on this. Plenty of people died because of what Manning did. Just not important people. Browns, Muslims, no one of consequence.
Mnemosyne
@Davis X. Machina:
Beat me to it.
Also, knowing what we now know about Wikileaks and their ties to Russia, the fact that the biggest damage was to US intelligence networks seems much less coincidental now.
Patricia Kayden
@Davis X. Machina: Hmmmm mmmmm. Just brown people. No worries.
trollhattan
@tpherald:
Which recycled troll are you, again?
Mnemosyne
@TenguPhule:
Manning was a dupe. There’s no reason to execute her while the people who exploited her roam free.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
We’ll have to agree to disagree when it comes to military justice. Its to regular justice what military bands are to regular music, but in this case I believe it would be fully warranted.
D58826
here we go again
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brussels-station-attack-belgium_us_594977dee4b08709c82ffd8f?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Patricia Kayden
@jl: That is very encouraging news. Hope it is true because Trump Care would be deadly. McConnell is absolute evil.
TenguPhule
@Mnemosyne:
I’d want them on trial and facing the same penalty upon conviction. We have to draw a line somewhere and if we can’t do it on behalf of all the people who faced a hideous death because of these actions, where do we?
/And yes, I wanted Cheney’s head on a platter for his leaking too.
Skippy-san
I’m sorry, but he still had an oath to preserve government secrets and not copy them and create hardships for those who came after him. Thanks to him, transfering information between networks has been a royal pain in the ass. Bottom line, it was not his place to make judgments and at the least, he should have passed them on to someone other than an asshole like Assange-who deserves to be killed, like it or not.
Major Major Major Major
@jl: I saw somebody speculating/quoting speculation recently that Mitch just wants this over with one way or another so he’s holding the vote whether he can pass it or not.
ETA: Yeesh, mind your pronouns, people. Chelsea Manning is a woman.
TenguPhule
@jl: Kabuki. They will fall into line except for those McConnell gives a pass. We’ve seen it time and again.
Patricia Kayden
@D58826: This will never stop. Thankfully this time there were no fatalities. Sigh.
D58826
@TenguPhule: And what ever one you pick will cost MONEY even if it saves money in the long run. We all know what Lord Keynes said about the long run…..
D58826
@Patricia Kayden: yep. the least bad outcome in a situation like this.
I do wonder if over a generation or so as the terrorists see that no one is terrorized. That the citizens of western Europe/US/etc are treat this like the same level of risk as dying from a wall mounted TV falling on you. maybe then it will slow down and stop. But the operative words are over a generation or so.
jl
@catclub: @TenguPhule: I only posted the comment so any readers in those states would know that their moderate GOP Senator really wants to hear from them. I am assuming that moderate GOpers always cave.
The Moar You Know
@Patricia Kayden: It really never has in Europe. It used to be disgruntled locals, now it’s immigrants. That’s really the only change.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know:
What sickens me the most is that our country used those people and betrayed them and their only fucking crime was that they BELIEVED IN US and tried to do the right thing (or at least, the thing our country was selling as right).
Manning just wasn’t rubbing salt in the wound, s/he was pouring hydrochloric acid in it.
jl
@Patricia Kayden: Problem is that the grand GOP tax cut plan needs help from repeal of Obamacare. Ginormous giga mega tax cuts for the upper crust of the 1% right now now now are what all this fuss is really about. Who gives a rat’s ass about the nation’s health? Really? So, I think they really want this. If McConnell’s preferred schedule is foiled, I think he will try again. Not sure if the mechanics of that is as easy in the Senate as in the House. But if he is prepared to introduce dummy legislation that will be 100% gutted and replaced with AHCA, then I guess he knows how to do it.
ruckus
@TenguPhule:
The hardest part is getting anyone to understand that governments have to both keep costs as low as possible and insure that nothing has been stolen so just the cost alone will never be as low as is possible in business. With modern software tools it is possible to create workable projects but there are, as you infer too many moving parts. Something drumpf and his friends have no clue about.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
McConnell is what you get when you combine Trump’s lack of compassion for anybody not named Trump with a functional understanding of government and parliamentary processes.
TenguPhule
@D58826: Or that time honored classic
“Fast, Cheap, Effective”
“Pick one.”
Redshift
@jl:
I remain skeptical, since McConnell’s secret no-committee no-debate process and trade-Medicaid-for-tax-cuts “health care” bill would be dead if just three of them told him they’d vote no. I hope they’re feeling the pressure, but until they actually do something, I’m not going to believe it.
jl
@Redshift: I didn’t say I believed. Thought people should know those Senators are just aching for their phones to ring.
TenguPhule
@ruckus: Yep, its Catch 22 on a grand scale.
Want government to get the best price?
Okay, got to buy in bulk, got to find out which supplier offers the cheapest for a bulk purchase and can’t reorder until the stockpiles from the last bulk order start running low.
“But it takes too long!”
Okay then, we got to pay a bit more because we’re no longer ordering in big bulk purchases on a slow but predictable schedule.
“But now you’re wasting taxpayer money!”
Make up your mind!
“We’ll just outsource it to private contractors then!”
Wonderful, now you have the worst of BOTH worlds.
Iowa Old Lady
@Redshift: It’s sad, but I agree
Jay S
@Jay S: OK, I read the article and scanned the report. Manning probably was responsible for documents in both releases. I over interpreted the article extracts.
Kenneth Kohl
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Chatting with a brother-in-law: he’s a true blue liberal and citizen. He told me this is the first time in his life (70 years) that he is ashamed to be an American. I do have days where I’m a “WTF have we wrought?”. But I have never been more pissed off and energized to rid ourselves of this canker-sore.
satby
@Davis X. Machina: Yeah, that struck me too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting if true, mostly because, if true, it’s only because Sasse and maybe Cruz and Paul don’t want their fingerprints on this if they run for president. If true.
Chris
@Keith P.:
“Skyfall” wasn’t that bad. Overrated, yes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Davis X. Machina: @satby: Yeah, I got distracted by the health care update, but: “No white people were harmed in the leaking of these leaks”. Buzzfeed, or The Intercept?
Chris
@hovercraft:
Meaning… it’s such a serious matter that we need to find the person who came up with it and put him in the White House?
I can live with that.
Roger Moore
@low-tech cyclist:
The Manning and Snowden cases were completely different in regard to how they got the documents. In Manning’s case, they made a deliberate decision to open up a huge trove of documents to all their analysts on the theory that excessive compartmentalization was impeding the analysts’ ability to do their work. Manning took advantage of that by grabbing essentially everything and turning it over to Wikileaks. IIRC, they’ve gone back to the kind of compartmentalization they had before.
In the case of Snowden, he was a computer administrator who used his access to steal everything he could. He also used his status as and administrator as a very effective means of social engineering to get at stuff even his normal administrative privileges couldn’t get to. There were obviously some serious problems in the way his organization was working that let him get away with stuff he never should have been allowed to do. The most obvious one would be to require admins to work in teams, with the unfortunate side effect that it would require a lot more labor to get anything done.
JDM
@hellslittlestangel:
Can you name any recent examples of when we did not do exactly that?
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah. I mean, it’s great that nobody [important] had their lives put at risk and all that, but damaging U.S. intelligence networks is really not the same thing as “no big deal,” given the magnitude of the intelligence war currently being waged on the United States.
satby
@The Moar You Know: what you said, speaking as someone who worked for CSC in the Federal sector.
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
Yeah, speaking as a Euro, this is what enrages me about the whole “Eurabia”/”Europe under siege” narrative. For fuck’s sake, we have seen this shit before, only very recently, and we’ll see it again. If it wasn’t right-wing fanatics, it was left-wing radicals, and if it wasn’t left-wing radicals, it was Irish, Basque, or Corsican separatists. It doesn’t mean any part of Europe is about to be Caliphated.
joel hanes
@Kenneth Kohl:
this is the first time in his life (70 years) that he is ashamed to be an American
My mother, a sprightly 85 year old and a Republican until Palinism made that untenable, has said the same thing to me and to the Republican Party fundraisers who still call, and to the R speaker of the Iowa House, a former friend.
randy khan
@Davis X. Machina:
The NY Times Magazine article on Chelsea Manning last weekend discussed briefly how Assange & Co. neglected to redact those names. It was pretty appalling, but no surprise from Assange.
The Moar You Know
@satby: fuck, I am sorry. I’ve had to work with them on projects but never for them. It’s mindblowing what that company has gotten away with.
Frankensteinbeck
You just disproved your own lede. That IS doing damage to American interests, and exactly the kind of thing that people deservedly are jailed for. Others have already pointed out how non-Americans fighting for us suffered for it, as well. These were the arguments made at the time against her, and your article says they were proven true.
@low-tech cyclist:
Snowden didn’t have access, at least not directly. All his ‘I could just type in a search!’ bullshit was bullshit. He exploited server admin powers to break into the accounts of people who did have access. I’m open to arguments we still need a lot better security than that.
TenguPhule
@Kenneth Kohl:
We are all Michelle Obama now (Pre-Obama presidency).
Kathleen
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: Or a Trump University module.
Major Major Major Major
@Frankensteinbeck:
Not even that, right? Didn’t he just use his capacity as The I.T. Guy to ask somebody higher up for their password to fix a thing, and use that?
randy khan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
If there are 7 no votes, what the heck is Heller doing as an undecided?
ruckus
@TenguPhule:
All that said, the VA does pretty well controlling costs. The big problem the VA has is labor. And not even as much docs/nurses but scheduling people.
ruckus
@joel hanes:
I’ve gotten a couple of emails from a
russianrepublican congressperson and my first response was polite. My response to the second email was not.randomfso
Honestly a DoD report about the impact of the Manning leaks is utterly irrelevant. The harm she did was in the diplomatic arena, not defense. Most of the things she released were a random assortment of Department of State cables. As someone who served as a DOS reporting officer overseas in a country that is one of the best allies of the US, I can tell you some people were reluctant to speak to me because of the leaks. I can only imagine what it was like in non-friendly countries. This causes harm becuase we can’t get the information we need.
Brisket
When your country is waging an immoral war, you have a moral duty to expose it. Even if that means breaking the law, even if it means leaking material to someone who turns out to be a total dipshit (Assange).
All this outrage at ‘she put Iraqi lives at risk!’ is sheerest tribal bullshit. She was one of the good guys before, but now she’s a traitor by association, right? Contaminated by Assange’s second-hand Trumpist fumes.
The number of Iraqi intelligence assets killed by these leaks will be dwarfed by the number illegally killed in incidents like this, part of a stupid war which would never have been allowed to happen if one if a hundred Americans had the integrity of Chelsea Manning.
BUT SHE BROKE THE LAW! Well? Are you one of those people who’s gonna cheer when a BLM protestor is assaulted by cops because ‘resisting arrest’ or ‘disturbing the peace’? It’s the lamest fucking copout there is.
(I’m not an American, btw, maybe this gives me a different perspective. I come from a country where you’re not seen as liberating heroes but as irrational, violent fuckups who should stay the hell away.)
TenguPhule
@Brisket:
Speaking only for myself, I never saw s/he as a good guy.
Our Republicans have no fucking integrity. We’d really like to be rid of them.