WikiLeaks Reportedly Outs 100s of Afghan Informants

[Scurrilous]

Source: CBS News

<snip>

"Hundreds of Afghan civilians who worked as informants for the U.S. military have been put at risk by WikiLeaks' publication of more than 90,000 classified intelligence reports which name and in many cases locate the individuals, The Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

The article says, in spite of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's claim that sensitive information had been removed from the leaked documents, that reporters scanning the reports for just a couple hours found hundreds of Afghan names mentioned as aiding the U.S.-led war effort.

One specific example cited by the paper is a report on an interview conducted by military officers of a potential Taliban defector. The militant is named, along with his father and the village in which they live.

"The leaks certainly have put in real risk and danger the lives and integrity of many Afghans," a senior official at the Afghan foreign ministry told The Times on condition of anonymity. "The U.S. is both morally and legally responsible for any harm that the leaks might cause to the individuals, particularly those who have been named. It will further limit the U.S./international access to the uncensored views of Afghans."

One former intelligence official told the paper that the Taliban could launch revenge attacks on "traitors" in the coming days."

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20011886-503543.html

[bluestateguy]

1. There was palpable outrage when Karl Rove had Valerie Plame outed

The same rule should apply here too, IF this turns out to be true.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Don't hold your breath.

[Hardrada]

3. What did the IRA do to infiltrators/traitors?

[Drunken Irishman]

4. I'm sure it wasn't pretty. lol

[saigon68]

41. Quislings

[Turbineguy]

5. OK, so nothing will happen.

[sabrina 1]

6. And all that outrage came to nothing. No one was held

accountable, which makes any outrage coming from this government, pretty hypocritical.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, placing the lives of its OWN citizens in danger is just part of 'being at war' and if people died, well, did anyone care? So how much does anyone think they care about Afghan lives?

Not much, considering how many we are killing with our drones and bombs. This pretend concern is not very convincing.

[ngant17]

10. Yes, collateral damage is ok according to gov.

the US shouldn't try to have this double-standard. Besides the CIA will probably prefer to kill its own informants in Afghanistan to make WikiLeaks look bad. A variation of the old false-flag op.

[midnight]

15. No one in george's administration cared.

[nyy1998]

17. Agreed, even if the Republicans can get away w/ it

I don't mind the leaked strategies/thoughts, but this makes me very uncomfortable.

[EFerrari]

24. That's a pretty big "if". I seriously doubt it is. n/t

[JDPriestly]

7. I'm waiting to decide on these papers.

Meanwhile, I am not visiting the website to look at them.

I am interested in the general information that they provide about what is going on in Afghanistan, but somehow I feel it is inappropriate for me to look at names, places and details. My reluctance is visceral, not conscious. I feel like I would be seeing something very intimate more than something politically wrong.

I don't know why. Something just holds me back -- like a sense of morality or what is right about it. Maybe this the OP put its finger on the reason. I just have this sense of something not being right about just publishing the details of these things.

I have a conflict because on the other hand, we have a right to know what is in those documents. It is our government that sends the troops to Afghanistan and implements these questionable operations and policies and we are responsible for our government.

It's a moral quandary.

[Skittles]

8. it's not good

it's an extreme reaction to extreme secrecy - and neither is good

[sabrina 1]

12. Well, I had the same reaction to seeing the

horrible photos of the dead civilians we kill on a daily basis, the maimed, tortured, starving and displaced human beings living in horrible conditions in refugee camps. Dahr Jamail, Robert Fisk especially described the horror of the carnage caused by just one of our drones on civilians, the bodies of little children, the horrendous grief of their loved ones.

These papers verify what the few brave independent journalists and the women of Afghanistan have been saying all along, that the NATO forces are killing thousands of civilians and have been lying about it.

Putting it all in perspective, even if these docs do place some people in danger, they could not come close to the danger this war has placed Afghan citizens in. And the documents themselves would not exist without the war.

If this war doesn't end, thousands more will die. This government, NATO, claiming to have concern for those possibly named in these docs, show no similar concern for all those they place in danger every day by dropping bombs on villages, on wedding parties etc.

They made these revelations necessary. THEY are responsible for this also. All of it is a result of a criminal invasion based on lies, just as Iraq was and trying to shift the blame now, is pure hypocrisy on their part.

What should we do? If exposing the real truth about the war ends it sooner, far more lives will be saved.

We have been lied to and lied to and I'm sure we will be lied to again, probably about some of those named being killed eg. I won't believe it, because I don't believe anything they say. All I know is they have killed over one million human beings, for nothing and this is the first time I have seen them show any concern about the safety of the citzens of either country.

However, I do understand your feelings. You are obviously a compassionate person.

[ronnie624]

21. As usual, your logic is impeccable. Excellent post. n/t

[sabrina 1]

23. Very nice of you to say that, thank you n/t

[grantcart]

22. You may find this report on the original co founder of Wikileaks being sceptical interesting

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/26/video-wikileaks-co-founder-skeptical/?iref=allsearch

[Turborama]

25. He does have an interesting take on things

I wonder how much of it is just personal vendetta/spite and how much is actually true, though. I've never heard about the $5million before. That doesn't mean it's not true, though.

Thanks for posting the vid.

Here's his site: http://cryptome.org/

[EFerrari]

26. The implication of the piece is that WL is "making money doing it".

[Turborama]

31. Yep.

And that any source of such large sums of money would invariably be able to corrupt them.

[EFerrari]

32. Which is almost funny, coming from a talking head on Corporate Bull Sh!t.

lol

[bemildred]

34. Nothing almost about it. nt

[grantcart]

36. the fact that wikileaks is not transparent makes them vulnerable to claims

I don't believe this guys claims but I don't believe something that has been leaked as being true either.

A more substantial caution on the documents is that any particular source has to be considered carefully because the fact that it was classified does not mean that it is reporting a fact. Rumors and false reports are classified as well.

If Wikileaks is promoting more transparency it would be helpful if they were a little more transparent themselves.

[jberryhill]

44. An unusual take, which bears repeating

In much of the reportage, contents of the raw reports are taken as "facts" when, in reality, they are raw reports from field sources which may be inaccurate or even disinformation deliberate fed to the reporters.

[superconnected]

35. The more I read about John Young the less I trust him.

I mean I was looking up court records today which in the county I'm in, now requires lawyers to submit on the web DIGITALLY. Many records are only available digitally now.

That guy is old and so is his thinking. Even his automatic conclusion that raising 5 million for wikileaks musts make it corrupt because he's awed by that much money, shows how out of touch he is. Now a days that is not much money at all. But you should read the crap he's say as it's his agenda to attack wikileaks all over the web now on 0 facts but that he guesses it must be corrupt because of wikileaks wanting to raise money to fund itself.

I mean come on, you just pointed me to a news article where now he's doesn't like wikileaks because it had digital documents instead of paper. It's 2010. I've worked in a "paper-less" office for at least 20 years now.

[jberryhill]

43. Your personal knowledge of their contents does not change anything

It is not an analogous situation to, say, someone leaking lurid details of allegations in a divorce proceeding involving your neighbors.

What surprises me most in the entire hullabaloo is that it is apparently not a breach of procedure for persons to carry writable data media into and out of a facility handling sensitive information in the first place.

[Tunkamerica]

9. 100's?

If true, and they provided a service for us and are willing, there should be little trouble relocating these people. We've relocated far more from other wars. I doubt that will happen and I doubt we'll here of this after a few days.

[No Elephants]

11. Didn't some govt rep say a day or so ago that the released info did not

help our enemies?

[Turborama]

13. They did

But that was on Monday and was an, "as far as we know" statement.

"But David Lapan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, told NBC News on Monday that a preliminary review by a Pentagon “assessment” team has so far not identified any documents whose release could damage national security. Moreover, he said, none of the documents reviewed so far carries a classification level above “secret” — the lowest category of intelligence material in terms of sensitivity.

The review team — consisting of military intelligence analysts, lawyers and others working for the Joint Chiefs of Staffs and other elements of the Defense Department — is examining the Wikileaks material to determine whether the disclosures endanger U.S. troops in the field, harm U.S. national security or compromise sources and methods for intelligence gathering.

While the team so far has not found any that would meet any of those criteria, Lapan noted that WikiLeaks has yet to publish all the documents it claims to have. Moreover, the Pentagon review has been stymied by the fact that, for at least part of the day Monday, the military team was unable to access WikiLeaks.org — apparently because of the heavy traffic it was receiving. In effect, the Pentagon analysts were unable to read classified government documents that had already been posted and read by the general public around the world."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38417666/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia

[jberryhill]

45. I doubt much from-the-hip commentary on 90,000 pages of data, either way

There is a rush to get the "definitive" word on this kind of stuff, but anyone who knows what is in 90,000 pages that quickly, is kidding themselves.

[Javaman]

14. 100's of informants? They must be really shitty, because the war is still epic fail. nt

[T Wolf]

16. What real difference does this make? Do you really think that the Afghans do not know who is

working for the US, who is a traitor to their own country?

<[b>ANYTHING that helps bring an end to these wars is good.

Sort of a parallel to the "lesser of two evils" meme that many here use to demand loyalty to the current gang of Democrats in DC.

[davidinalameda]

18. I wonder how many of those informants will be alive by the end of the month

or week or however long

I hope the US gives the asylum

[xocet]

19. "...Reportedly Outs 100s...."

So, CBS is apparently such a feeble news organization that it cannot even research its own stories any longer.

If anything, the DU should set up its own independent database to scan these documents. Otherwise, it comes down to believing CBS or FOX who are sourcing their reports to The Times of London which is owned by News Corporation - i.e. Rupert Murdoch. Now, of course, Murdoch is completely trustworthy...(sarcasm):

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20011886-503543.html

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/afghanistan/article2662444.ece

For the purpose of searching, the Fox News headline is "Leaked War Files Expose Identities of Afghan Informants." (Along with this article is the usual set of hate-filled diatribes that the Fox News consumers provide: many of these intellectuals accuse Julian Assange of treason in their vapid commentaries.)

Lastly, doesn't anyone find it interesting that the source for the CBS and FOX reports is hidden behind a subscription firewall and that the substantive reporting that both CBS and FOX are doing is virtually nil?

[bemildred]

20. Yeah, "on condition of anonymity" too.

Don't you just love the "truthiness" of that?

[Turborama]

33. You make a good point about Murdoch's media empire setting up road signs to his subscription site

It's on his Sky News website too, almost verbatim to the other ones: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Afghan-Informants-Named-In-Wikileaks-War-Logs-Putting-Their-Lives-At-Risk-A-Paper-Reports/Article/201007415672241?lpos=UK_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_2&lid=ARTICLE_15672241_Afghan_Informants_Named_In_Wikileaks_War_Logs,_Putting_Their_Lives_At_Risk,_A_Paper_Reports_

It doesn't matter though, anyone who has 75MB of hard drive space and some spare time can go through it and have a look for themselves.

BTW CNN are crowdsourcing on iReport for the research on this: http://ireport.cnn.com/ir-topic-stories.jspa?topicId=475812

[superconnected]

27. Somehow I doubt this is true. We had undercover people when I worked for one gov agency

and never used their real names in offical documents. They were giving fake names and fake numbers.

[Pavulon]

38. These are army documents, not NSA codeword operations

so not unreasonable to believe a real name and address would be used by a jg officer filing a report. And it is pretty safe to assume that those people are going to get dead quick.

But I don't think wikileaks agenda gives a shit about that.

[CHIMO]

28. Does not agree

With today's Democracy Now program.

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange: "Transparent Government Tends to Produce Just Government"

JULIAN ASSANGE: That’s correct. It’s some 15,000 that sometimes mention the names of informers in Afghanistan. And because of the security situation there, we want to look at these in a bit more detail, with a bit closer scrutiny, before we release them. But we will release them as soon as possible. In the rare incidences where there are people named who are innocent informers, we will redact those names. And once the security situation in Afghanistan improves, we will release the full text of that material.


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/28/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_transparent_government
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2010/july/video/dnB20100728a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:11:10

[EFerrari]

29. If the Pentagon was concerned with Afghan deaths, Wikileaks

would be unnecessary.

First they said that troops were put in danger.

Now they say their collaborators are in danger.

Next they'll say this is some kind of fund raising scam or that Julian is crazy.

[bemildred]

30. I expect he will be a terrorist collaborator before this is done.

And anything else that serves to distract from the stuff he released. Attack the messenger in all it's full glory.

[Pavulon]

37. Nope the guy who dumped the docs will die in federal prison

and this guy will bask in his glory for a bit, then return to being an obscure ass. Again it takes a long time to read, but nothing earth shattering so far..

[bemildred]

39. Still upset about all this unexpected transparency, eh? nt

[Hardrada]

40. Spooks flock together.

[BreweryYardRat]

42. So Assange and his source are lazy bastards who didn't bother to redact informants' identities.

Exposing the killing of civilians by NATO troops is a critically important issue.

However, exposing the identities and locations of hundreds of people to a bunch of murderous fundamentalist savages is
not fucking acceptable.

All Assange and/or his source had to do was redact the names and locations of these people. Wouldn't have taken more than a day or two extra.

Now, we've got to take them and their families into protective custody, depriving us of any further information they might have been able to provide.