Wikileaks director Julian Assange has masterfully created a global media firestorm with the illicit material he says contains evidence of war crimes.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution

By Ed Hooper 

The classified video showing U.S. Army soldiers attacking a group of alleged terrorists in North Baghdad and more than 100,000 secret diplomatic cables illegally uploaded to Wikileaks has set a new precedent in espionage.

There were no dead drops, no cash exchanged and no turned agents. A simple disgruntled key stroke unloaded the largest stash of American secrets in U.S. history.

The Pentagon claims the information puts lives at risk and is demanding the organization return the files.

Wikileaks is the only one who knows how much information actually was uploaded. Fortunately, there has been no real earth-shattering surprises to date that haven’t been correctly guessed or analyzed by the modern 24-7 news cycle.

The absence of a malevolent nation here belies the damage done. If Pentagon officials are correct in their assertions, publishing these documents can only be likened to giving out addresses of people in the Witness Protection Program.

The information could provoke targeted assassinations and compromise successful military tactics. In other words, peace activist and Wikileaks director Julian Assange could have real blood on his hands.

Assange has taken the international freedom of information cause and what is legitimately a beneficial organization to the brink of disaster. The Australian native is a former computer hacker. These largely self-taught prodigies view their subversive abilities as a competitive art form. Like graffiti artists, they “tag” their work with the instability they cause and the ensuing publicity trying to correct it.

Sadly, this incident seems no different. Assange has masterfully created a global media firestorm with the illicit material he says contains evidence of war crimes.

U.S. and allied nations refute the claims. They say the war is not against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq or against the Islamic religion. It is directed at criminal elements in those nations who capitalize on existing poverty and underdevelopment to twist the sacred ideas of religion into a destructive force that destroys lives.

Innocent people do get killed in wars and this one has been no different. This enemy wears no uniform. They attack and hide in urban areas. This one is extremely knowledgeable in media manipulation of public opinion and the Internet has been their best tool.

The illusional cyber community they have created recruits Westerners to their cause and some into their ranks. The Wikileaks world has no national borders to those residing there, but the real one does.

On their Internet site streaming the video of the helicopter attack in Iraq, it states: “On July 6, 2010, Private Bradley Manning, a 22 year old intelligence analyst with the United States Army in Baghdad, was charged with disclosing this video [after allegedly speaking to an unfaithful journalist].”

Many peace activists are claiming Manning should be given whistle-blower status.

But the real whistle-blower in this incident is former hacker-turned-journalist Adrian Lamo. He learned a U.S. Army intelligence analyst was illegally and maliciously uploading top secret information to an entity in a foreign nation. His responsibilities as a journalist and a U.S. citizen required him to take action.

Stateside activists supporting Manning’s cause point to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 ruling on the Vietnam era “Pentagon Papers.” They say that decision is the legal grounds to permit Manning’s uploads to be published.

The argument is irrelevant. The Supreme Court’s ruling applied to U.S. news organizations only. Wikileaks is based in Sweden and outside the jurisdiction of American law.

Manning allegedly would have to take this material to a U.S. official or a stateside news organization that could have actually acted in the interest of American citizens to make a whistle-blower case.

Lamo simply weighed the moral obligation of guarding a source with that of protecting American soldiers in the line of fire.

It’s no secret that government and major corporations hire and utilize computer hackers for valid security reasons. The nation’s enemies attempt to hack U.S. computer networks every day to mine classified data and those systems must be defended.

This incident stresses a needed review of military recruiting standards for hackers and digital security protocols. The fact that an individual was able to do this is frightening.

The hard truth is these classified documents are now in cyberspace and can’t be realistically retrieved. It also must be assumed the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network used by both the U.S. State Department and the military is compromised.

The breach of security in this incident is justifiably alarming, and warrants a closer look from Congress.

Ed Hooper, a military affairs writer from Knoxville, writes for the History News Service.

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