Posted By McQ on the worthy blog BLACKFIVE - I am re-posting here in the interest of national security. - S. L.
On the eve of the anniversary of D-Day, it isn’t difficult, given their record, to believe that if it was the Obama Administration in charge on that historic day, the Germans would have known all about it.
In recent months, operations which we should frankly know nothing about, have been leaked by this administration.
Most observers have come to the conclusion that the leaks are an attempt to paint a positive picture of Obama the Commander-in-Chief in what promises to be a bruising fight for re-election. The reason for such an attempt is the rest of the Obama record leaves much to be desired.
Here from Peter Brooks at the NY Post is a litany of the leaks:
It started with the Osama bin Laden takedown last May, in which operational and intelligence details found their way out of the White House Situation Room to the press in just a number of hours.
In a slap at the leakers, then- Defense Secretary Bob Gates said, “We all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden . . . That all fell apart on Monday — the next day.”
The situation was made worse by exposing the role a Pakistani doctor played in finding bin Laden. The doc is now going to jail for 30-some years — and the crafty inoculation program meant to get Osama’s DNA is blown.
Earlier this year, info escaped about the busting of the plot to put an “underwear bomber” on a US-bound aircraft by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
While kudos go to the intel community for this fabulous counterterrorism op, it was revealed that the expected bomber was a double agent who’d penetrated AQAP. Now al Qaeda knows, too.
Then, late last week, came a news story on “Stuxnet,” the tippy-top-secret US-Israel cyberassault on Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz that’s been going on since the George W. Bush presidency.
It’s terrific the cyberattack reportedly led to the destruction of some centrifuges used in Iran’s bomb program, but now the mullahs know for sure who was behind the operation.
Moreover, dope on our highly successful drone program continues to ooze out.
All of this has led to compromising networks, having an agent (the Pakistani doctor) arrested and jailed, and blowing other operations. It has also made it clear to our allies that sharing intel with the US is a risky business, especially if the outcome could help the political career of the incumbent president.
Let’s be clear here – none of this should have leaked. None of it. A fairly terse announcement of fact that Osama bin Laden was confirmed dead should have been the extent of any sort of information released. That’s it.
Instead operational details that should never have seen the light of day have been routinely released. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows you never, ever talk about methods and means. Yet both have been a part of these releases.
This sort of behavior, for pure political gain, compromises our intel gathering capabilities and is likely to hurt future operations. We spend years trying to develop human intelligence networks and agents and in one fell swoop we compromise them (the double agent in Yemen and the doctor in Pakistan).
Who is going to trust us now?
"It's a pattern that goes back two years, starting with the Times Square bomber, where somebody in the federal government, probably the FBI, leaked his name before he was captured," said Rep. Pete King, the GOP chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
"That's why he tried to leave the country — he knew they were on to him." Calling the episode "amateur hour" at the White House, King said: "It puts our people at risk and gives information to the enemy."
Amateurs are dangerous. Amateurs who leak classified information for political gain are even more dangerous.
It’s time to stop “amateur hour at the White House.”
~McQ
Twitter: @McQandO
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