Before it’s TIME.
Initially, note that Time has refused to correct its blatantly false claim that WikiLeaks has published “thousands of classified State Department cables” and posted “thousands of secret diplomatic cables” when, in reality, they’ve posted only 1,269 of the more than 250,000 cables they possess: less than 1/2 of 1 %. It’s true that they provided roughly 251,000 cables to five newspapers, but they have only “posted” and “published” roughly 1,200 of them. Time just decided to leave that statement standing even knowing it is factually false.
There is an enormous amount of hypocrisy in those who are defending the government’s right to over-classify and deny access to the information that has been used to justify going to war, among other crimes. Insiders in government have no qualms about abusing classified information as long as it suits their purposes. Dick Cheney used insider secret information to “out” CIA officer Valerie Plame to punish her husband. The White House leaked intelligence that turned out to be bogus to Judith Miller at the New York Times to make the case for going to war against Iraq. George Tenet, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote a book called In the Eye of the Storm, which earned him in excess of $4 million. He worked in a SCIF (which stands for sensitive compartmented information facility) run by the defense and intelligence contractor SAIC and had access to all of his classified “papers” to help him write the book. Bear in mind that he was retired, with no official status at the time, was writing something for profit, and was using freely provided government resources to turn a buck. There was apparently no problem in his using classified material.
I don’t know much…I don’t know too much, but I know this…
Terraformed 