Replying to a message of Jeff Binkley to Bob Ackley:

 JB>>> Why is nobody calling for The Shrew to be held accountable for
 JB>>> the State  Department leaks to the Wiki site ?  If this were a
 JB>>> Republican they  would be calling for a complete investigation
 JB>>> of the State Department.   Why isn't Hillary being held
 JB>>> accountable, unless this is more of the  Obama Administration
 JB>>> attempting to discredit the US and her allies.

 BA>> I'm not sure the leak was in DOS.  Some Army guy was nailed some time
 BA>> back for making unauthorized copies of thousands of classified
 BA>> documents and giving copies of the CD to the media.  Not sure but
 BA>> this may be the source for most of Wiki's material.

 JB> I doubt it.  The Army typically doesn't have access to this wide
 JB> variety  of information unless they are assigned to the State
 JB> Department or  similar.  If this was all about the war and such, then
 JB> I might agree.

I just re-read an article about it.  The fellow was an Army PFC analyst of
some sort and is believed to have downloaded - without permission - 150,000
classified documents and released them to people 'not authorized to receive them.'
He also is believed to be the source of a video of a US Army helicopter attack on
what turned out to be civilians, including a Reuters reporter and his driver.

According to the story investigators were going through every computer the guy
had access to to try to trace where he sent the stuff he swiped.  As of the date
on the story, which was this past summer IIRC, they hadn't actually linked him
to WikiLeaks.  But they did say that many if not of the documents were diplomatic
in nature (why they were even accessible on a military network was not explained)..

Back when I handled classified material = and I handled a LOT of it over a
period just
shy of 20 years (evern wrote some of it) - your access to material was
limited by your
need to know it.  If you didn't need it you just didn't get access to it, period.

I even got an AF pilot really upset when I wouldn't tell him how I knew something.
I was in the COMINT business and he wasn't.  And on a pragmatic level if he didn't
know why he was looking for something he couldn't tell the bad guys if he got shot
down and captured.  Note that when I was flying in EC-47s I carried a .38; what I
don't know is if I'd've had the guts to blow my own head off rather than be captured
should the bird I was in go down for any reason.


 BA>> She shure has been flapping her jaw about it the last couple of days.
 BA>> Any press coverage is good coverage to people like her, I guess.

 BA>> I note that the US government apparnently engaged in cyber attacks
 BA>> against the Wiki site to try to shut it down.  I would not be a bit
 BA>> surprised if the US government kidnapped the people running Wiki and
 BA>> brought them here for trial.

 JB> That could happen but we need to go after the source.  Someone or some 
 JB> group within the government had to leak the documents.  


 BA>> People - particularly government officials and their supporters -
 BA>> can't seem to understand that US law is without force or effect
 BA>> outside of the US.  That's why I have major problems with the
 BA>> conduct of this government WRT Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. 
 BA>> Neither of them was a sterling example of humanity, but neither of
 BA>> them had ever set foot in this country, either.  The US government
 BA>> conquered Panama and then dragged Noriega from his country to this
 BA>> one in order to put him on 'trial.'  The same is true of all those
 BA>> people at Guantanamo, the US government has no legitimate power to
 BA>> enforce its laws outside of its borders - the fact that it can and
 BA>> does is one reason the US is as unpopular as it is in parts of the
 BA>> rest of the world.  Might does not necessarily make right.

 JB> Agreed but there is enough within our jurisdiction to go after.

That's certainly true.  BTW, IMO that army PFC shouldn't see the outside of
a military prison for a very long time.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+