United States vs. Manning

A timeline of the U.S. investigation between 2006 to 2013

  • submit to reddit
 
2010-07-26
 
We have got to change the culture of disclosure not only in Washington DC but really the new culture of connectivity to the Internet is causing us big problems.

Really, it's great its changes the way we interface with each other, it changed commerce in a way that has been phenomenal and presented opportunity to just millions and millions and millions of Americans and people around the world...been a pretty spectacular thing...

But, you get young folks who get into the intelligence business who have been brought up on this notion that I can go onto a social network if I am an intelligence officer or not. I can bring other devices and hook it up to my computer at work cause I am staying connected. If I am an intelligence officer or not...I know it sounds silly. You are thinking, 'Who would do that? That can't happen.'

Matter of fact there was a recent kind of sting/under-cover deal that happened very shortly_not so long ago_where one of the federal folks decided to go through, and just go up on Facebook and see how many people in the intelligence business he could get to respond and communicate and friend.

I would like to tell you it was zero. It was a very large number. Some of them invited this person who did not exist by the way. It was a man posing as a woman, to come in and speak. 'Would they offer advice on some of the projects that they were working on?, Would they like a job?'

I would like to tell you this was ten years ago, cause we just didn't understand it. This was within the last few months, this happened [July 2010].

So you get some young soldier who says, 'I don't really understand the whole war.' By the way if you are a private you have no concept of what the strategy is, right?

For those of you who have been in the military, you know. It takes a lot of rank on your shoulder before you figure out what really is happening on the battlefield. But I haven't met a soldier yet, who didn't think they had a better answer, right?

Including me. I always thought as a Captain, 'Boy I If that general just came down here, I will tell him how to run this war.' Right?

But now they have gone one step farther. And because of this connectivity they decide you know what, 'I don't like this policy. I may not even understand it. I don't even really know what is happening. I think I know. I am gonna release information. I am gonna get this right. Somebody has got to know about this.'

And we are finding huge disclosure of information, what you saw in that 91 thousand documents was not a very senior person who was squirreling away information as we know it today, and felt so wronged by the conduct of the war of which they very clearly had no understanding_that they would release this information.

And now, by the way, now you have a third party making the determination based on a political agenda of what they think should be disclosed: 'I find it offensive on report number six.'

Now they may have never been in the military. They may not understand what report number six does, but they go ahead and release that information. That is about the worst combination you could possibly have.

Well they said, 'We determined it wouldn't be harmful to US troops. ' Really? Well thank you for that. Where was this guy when we needed him? When we were planning how to keep our secrets?

And think of this_they actually located this site...wikisecrets.org [sic] in Belgium, because the laws are so loose about the disclosure of this kind of information.

They very clearly knew what they were doing. And if anytime that you tell the enemy how your soldiers perform or maybe they don't perform or how they perform, you have given them a valuable piece of intelligence_valuable piece of intelligence.

So, any determination by a private first class or some guy from Australia is a dangerous place for us to be.

But it has to not be just there. It is also the fact that we have the Attorney General running out putting documents on the Internet that shouldn't be there.

They disclosed in public some sensitive details of a spy swap before the actual deal was done. You know, it is just shocking that they would do that. Remember the press conference after the Christmas Day bomber where they disclosed people who were cooperating? They were so proud of themselves; they went out and had a press conference_and jeopardized whole lines of communications, and really the health and welfare of individuals not necessarily in the United States.

This culture has to change. It is ok to have state secrets for the national security and the interests of a safer America. It really is. That is why you have an oversight committee. That is why you have us [politicians]. That is why you have outside groups like the institute [Potomac Institute for Policy Studies] here, who are looking and analyzing and taking a look at these things. You have channels to regress [sic address?] your grievances.

You know the FISA case was always fascinating to me, because I was there through that whole thing.

Remember when it got disclosed. I know the newspaper won all kinds of awards for it, and it was disclosed interestingly enough on someone who was never really in the program, never really understood the program, and was not briefed in the program.

But was just close enough that they thought they knew what was in the program, and I can tell you for sure that what they thought they knew and what was published in the papers was not exactly that program.

But it didn't matter, because they got convinced that by their political agenda, something was bad was happening. Caused enough trouble that it certainly gave the bad guys an idea of how we were conducting business. It as not completely accurate, but it was close enough for them, to change the way they operated.

That is a victory for the bad guys. I wish we would get back to 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' Remember that WWII_they actually put posters everywhere reminded people that this isn't about you. It's bigger than you. And, that information that you leaked could cause the death of one of your fellow citizens. We haven't gotten there yet, we have to win that culture of disclosure fight, and we better win it soon.

'What would you do if you were king for a day Mike Rogers?'

I would dismantle the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] as we know it.

I would take every operational touch that that agency has today and move it off and put it back where it belongs in the hands of operators and people who are gonna make useful decisions with it.

And, use the DNI solely for a coordination effort. That should be the most boring intelligence job in the world if we do this right. They don't need to know about operations or the details of a swap on the Russian spies. They don't need to know about some new great breakthrough on the technology that is actually gonna be placed in the field today.

They need to be coordinating. They need to tell us where we are going on our overhead architecture in ten years. They need to tell us where we get rid of waste and duplication.

This is the headquarters element of a very large company that is robust and moving ahead and making sales. They don't need to be in the middle of any of it. If we are gonna do it right, we may even have to change the name of it.

In this town that only ever happens...Ronald Reagan was right when he said the closest thing to living forever is the announcement of a government program. Or something close to that...anyway.

That is why he was Ronald Reagan he said that a lot better than I did.

If we do not change where we are going we are going to have lots of problems.

Think about it. Cyber. We have built more bureaucracy to get a handle on the bureaucracy not gonna work. The bureaucracy itself we handle by creating this huge mammoth bureaucracy that is sucking up resources, and it has created this 'culture'...perpetuating this 'culture of disclosure.'

And that starts at the top, but it works all the way down in this new social media and medium. If we do not get a handle on these three things I am telling you we are not g
  Name(s:) Mike Rogers (MI-R)
  Title: Chair, United States Representative
  Agency(ies): House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, United States House of Representatives
Url: Url Link
 
 
Title:
Intelligence Management and Oversight, July 26, 2010
Author: Mike Rogers (R-MI)
Title: Chairman
Authoring or Creator Agency: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, United States House of Representatives
Audience: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies
 
database built by Alexa O'Brien and Shoofly Solutions