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Jake Tapper is ABC News' Senior White House Correspondent based in the network's Washington bureau. He writes about politics and popular culture and covers a range of national stories.
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WHAT THE CIA SAYS ABOUT LEAKS
June 27, 2006 3:00 PM
ABC NEWS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REPORTER JASON RYAN WRITES:
From a CIA Studies in Intelligence paper on media leaks, this has a few good cold war examples: CLICK HERE
"While leaks of classified information are often intended to influence or inform US audiences, foreign intelligence services and terrorists are close and voracious readers of the US press. They are keenly alert to revelations of US classified information. For example, a former Russian military intelligence officer wrote: 'I was amazed—and Moscow was very appreciative—at how many times I found very sensitive information in American newspapers. In my view, Americans tend to care more about scooping their competition than about national security, which made my job easier .'
"I call this the Lunev Axiom: Classified intelligence disclosed in the press is the effective equivalent of intelligence gathered through foreign espionage. Importantly, more than just Russian intelligence officers understand this. Key adversaries of the United States, such as China and al-Qaida, derive a significant amount of their information on the United States and US intelligence from the media, including the Internet. What we need to understand are the legal implications of this key principle.
"Reported Examples of Intelligence Losses due to Press Leaks:
"Soviet ICBM testing, 1958. A New York Times story on 31 January 1958 reported that the United States was able to monitor the eight-hour countdown broadcasts for Soviet missile launches from Tyuratam (now Baykonur), Kazakhstan, which provided enough lead time to dispatch US aircraft to observe the splashdowns and, thus, collect data used to estimate the accuracy of the intercontinental ballistic missiles. Following publication of the article, Moscow cut the countdown broadcasts to four hours, too little time for US aircraft to reach the landing area. Occurring in the midst of the missile-gap controversy, the publication of the press item left President Eisenhower livid, according to Wayne Jackson in Allen Welsh Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence (July 1973, declassified history, Volume IV, pp. 29-31, in Record Group 263, National Archives). According to the same source, some intelligence was lost forever, and, to recoup the remainder, the US Air Force had to rebuild an Alaskan airfield at a cost of millions of dollars.
"Politburo conversations, 1971. In a 16 September 1971 column in The Washington Post, Jack Anderson wrote that US intelligence was successfully intercepting telephone conversations from limousines used by members of the Soviet Politburo in Moscow. In his book, For the President’s Eyes Only (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1966, p. 359), British historian Christopher Andrew says that this US collection program producing highly sensitive information ended abruptly after Anderson’s revelations.
"Soviet submarine, 1975. The Los Angeles Times published a story on 7 February 1975 that the CIA had mounted an operation to recover a sunken Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean floor. The New York Times ran with its own version the next day. After this story broke, Jack Anderson further publicized the secret operation on national television on 18 March. In his memoir, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (London: Hutchinson, 1978, pp. 413-418), former DCI William Colby wrote: ' There was not a chance that we could send the Glomar [Explorer] out again on an intelligence project without risking the lives of our crew and inciting a major international incident. . . . The Glomar project stopped because it was exposed. '"
-- Jason A. Ryan
June 27, 2006 | Permalink | User Comments (3)
Independent: The issue is that the most fundamental tenent of intelligence gathering operations is that you do not tell the enemy what you are doing, nor what you are not doing. Every tiny piece of information is used to fill out the entire puzzle of what your enemy is up to. When a piece of information that is *suspected* to be true is validated (ala the NYT's SWIFT exposure) it tells the enemy many things.
The details provided by the NYT probably were not known before to the enemy and now they can adjust their operations and planning accordingly.
Also, if SWIFT monitoring is shut down due to the exposure by the NYT, the enemy knows that there is a good possibility that SWIFT is then 'safer' for them to use for funds transfer.
Posted by: F15C | Jun 29, 2006 4:05:38 PM
I can see if people weren't already told about what our government was doing with the banking records right from the beginning. We actually knew that the other governments and the banking systems were using this info to trace the money and to catch the dam terrorists. I don't understand why our government is acting like we didn't already know about this info right from the beginning when 911 occurred. I think our government was angry that the NY times informed our public about the timeline that the military came out with. That is what is making them angry and so they found something to go after the press for because we, americans, want to have more info about withdrawing from Iraq and feel we deserve to know this info. I have trust in our press to leave out basic info that would harm us when it comes to our security. Our government is not above the law to keep info from it's citizen's if the info shows a possible abuse of our rights....Does anyone support our constitution anymore and the Bill of Rights???
Posted by: an Independent | Jun 27, 2006 6:42:54 PM
Jason, many thanks the link to this interesting position paper about leaking classified information. Two unintentionally hilarious points I noted: I was going to ask who leaked it to you, but I noted that it was unambiguously marked "unclassified." I also found no small sense of irony in the author's unintentionally hilarious title of "Vice Chairman of the DCI Foreign Denial and Deception Committee." Is their motto "Deny and deceive."?
Ironic or not, the positions stated in the paper are utterly unsurprising: does anyone think the CIA is in FAVOR of leaking classified information? Does anyone think that an author who liberally quotes John Ashcroft--an individual who unequivocally showed during his reign of terror that he would like to reverse US citizens' rights to those of medieval serfs under their lords--would be favorably disposed to reveal anything to the press? In my view, the CIA would most certainly prefer a muzzled, neutered press to keep their clandestine bumbling secret and free of interference, and the changes the author of the paper proposes would severely limit the public's right to know about the workings of their government. Adoption of such a plan as the author's would be wonderful for the CIA but a severe setback for everyone else.
Posted by: chuck | Jun 27, 2006 3:45:26 PM
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