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Backlash yet to come, Barack Obama, classified cable messages, espionage, global disruption, Hillary Clinton, national intelligence, National Security, State Department, top secret information, treason, UN Security Council, Wikileaks
HotAir.com
posted at 2:55 pm on November 29, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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Could the Obama administration have stopped any or all of the three Wikileaks data dumps? Former Bush aide Michael Gerson argues that not only could the White House have disrupted Julian Assange’s operation, but that given the potential damage that a breach of diplomatic and military security could mean on this scale, Obama had a duty to do so. The failure to act shows a weakness in Obama that increases the risk for the US, Gerson argues in today’s Washington Post:
WikiLeaks’ first disclosures caught the Obama administration by surprise. But how does the administration explain its inaction in the face of WikiLeaks’ two subsequent, and increasingly dangerous, releases? In both cases, it had fair warning: Assange announced what kinds of documents he possessed, and he made clear his intention to release them.
The Obama administration has the ability to bring Assange to justice and to put WikiLeaks out of business. The new U.S. Cyber Command could shut down WilkiLeaks’ servers and prevent them from releasing more classified information on President Obama’s orders. But, as The Post reported this month, the Obama administration has been paralyzed by infighting over how, and when, it might use these new offensive capabilities in cyberspace. One objection: “The State Department is concerned about diplomatic backlash” from any offensive actions in cyberspace, The Post reported. Well, now the State Department can deal with the “diplomatic backlash” that comes from standing by helplessly, while WikiLeaks releases hundreds of thousands of its most sensitive diplomatic cables.
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