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...Mr. President, last weekend, a Web page called WikiLeaks posted what they titled the ''Afghan War Diary.'' It involved the collection of 91,000 operational and intelligence documents about information that was collected in Afghanistan, and it was, they said, stolen from U.S. military networks. These documents contain sensitive information on military tactics, techniques and procedures and it revealed the names of critical intelligence sources. Very sensitive information is now in the hands of adversaries, and I wish to express
I am sad to say, this is what is breaking right now in Newsweek: 'Taliban Seeks Vengeance in Wake of WikiLeaks. Leaked U.S. Intel documents listed the names and villages of Afghan collaborators--and the Taliban is starting to retaliate.' That is the headline in Newsweek that has just broken.
I have the privilege of serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. I can tell you what has happened is very disturbing, and I agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has stated that the release of these documents has endangered lives--both the lives of our American service men and women and the lives of Afghan people who happen to give us important information to help us protect our Americans.
It has been just over a week since the release of these classified documents, and the media reports indicate, as that Newsweek article indicates that has just been published, that the retaliation has begun.
Last week, when the New York Times reported on this subject, they said a search of the leaked documents 'gave the names or other identifying features of dozens of Afghan informants, potential defectors and others who were cooperating with American and NATO troops.' That is the New York Times article.
Also, last week, in response to the listing of these names, a Taliban spokesman stated this:
'We are studying the report. .....We will investigate through our own secret service whether the people mentioned are really spies working for the US. If they are ..... spies, then we know how to punish them.'
Well, we have the indications that the Taliban is following through with their plan to punish, so-called punish. According to this Newsweek article, death threats have begun arriving at the homes of key tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan, and over the past weekend one tribal leader was taken from his home and executed.
One of these death threats was shared with a reporter, and this is what the death threat states:
'We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don't, you don't have the right to complain.'
Obviously, something very serious has happened, and there are a bunch of us who are extremely concerned about the damage this incident has caused to our operations in Afghanistan and to our national security as a whole.
There are a bunch of questions we have to answer. How could we have allowed the names of those who cooperate with us to be posted on an open-source Web page or was this surreptitiously taken away? Another question: What kind of impact will this leak have on our ability to gain the trust of local populations in the future?
This security breach is absolutely astonishing, and it represents a systematic breakdown in our national security procedures. I simply find it hard to believe that somebody could have downloaded tens of thousands of documents from our classified military networks without them being detected. So it brings us back to suspecting they have been leaked, and if it had never appeared, would we have known they were stolen from our classified networks?
Another question: How many people were actually involved in this incident? Do we have a way to determine whether additional documents have been or are being stolen in the same manner?
These are serious questions that I am sure the Department of Defense is examining as we speak. I applaud Secretary Gates for taking swift action to aggressively investigate who was responsible. But it is just as important to find out how our security practices failed to prevent the leak and to identify what must be done to prevent another security breach of this magnitude. The investigation is underway. We need to know the scope of the investigation. We need to be informed on what immediate steps have to be taken to address the network security breach.
When you start dealing with people's lives, you simply cannot fool around with this kind of laxity or someone betraying the country, and we have to get to the bottom of it. |
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Bill Nelson of Florida (FL-D) |
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United States Senator |
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United States Senate |
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Title: |
Bill Nelson, US Senator and Representative from Florida |
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Authoring or Creator Agency: |
LittleSiS |
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