ShareThisThe young founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, boasts that his mission is "crushing bastards," and that he enjoys the work. This is part of his explanation and justification for the unauthorized publication of tens of thousands of stolen classified U.S. military intelligence documents regarding the war in Afghanistan.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have publicly denounced the publication of these materials. Gates has asked the FBI to join the investigation.
Mullen has stated bluntly that American military personnel and our allies, as well as their families, may pay for this publicity with their lives.
Assange boasts that documents have been withheld and others edited to remove the names of individuals. However, in fact many names of people are included, along with some detailed information on Afghanistan collaborators' villages and families. There is also extensive documentation of U.S. and NATO methods of military deployment, reconnaissance and combat engagement.
There are obvious parallels with the controversial Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam War era. Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst at RAND, a military think tank in Southern California, copied the top secret documents without authorization.
The material was leaked to The New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers, resulting in publication. Ellsberg immediately became a very public hero of the anti-Vietnam War movement, as well as a public martyr as a result of intense and ultimately illegal persecution by the Nixon administration.
However, there are fundamental differences between the two cases.
Assange and associates have spewed out an avalanche of disorganized, random information. There are insights into intelligence, but solid substance exists in a sea of subjectivity.
Separating facts from misperception and misinformation is the fundamental test of intelligence analysis. The sanctimonious, superficial attention seekers at WikiLeaks in effect have confirmed they are clueless about this reality.
By contrast, the Pentagon Papers were initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to create an accurate record of Vietnam War decisions and policies. After starting the project, he kept hands off, an act of enormous self-discipline by a man who was usually exceptionally domineering and interfering.
The result is a well-organized, credible and very revealing description of planning, decision-making and improvising at the top of the U.S. government as the Vietnam tragedy unfolded.
Ellsberg was tried for conspiracy, espionage and theft; but McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, aptly described the documents as a 'first cut of history' in testimony.
An increasingly paranoid Nixon White House had wiretapped Ellsberg and burglarized his psychiatrist's office. When this information became known, the charges against him were dismissed.
The more direct analogy with WikiLeaks irresponsibility is the criminal behavior of Philip Agee, an unstable, disaffected U.S. intelligence veteran who published the names of CIA agents in his 1975 book "Inside the Company." This despicable act could have led to criminal prosecution, but Agee fled abroad.
The contemporary computer and information revolutions from the start have been intimately interconnected with the military. The Internet began as a project of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Defense Department. Military command, communications and reconnaissance all benefited.
Yet these revolutions also facilitate theft of information. Along with aggressive investigation of the WikiLeaks incident, the Pentagon and other security agencies should undertake a thorough review and tightening of access to sensitive information. That is a very tangible way of helping the troops.
(Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College. E-mail him at acyr(at)carthage.edu.)
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