George's Information and Comments

www.giac2002.org

History Repeats Itself

    -- from A History of the American People by Paul Johnson, page 898/899:

"In his [Nixon's] first five months in office, twenty-one major leaks from classified National Security Council documents appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post. Later that year the CIA sent to the White House a list of forty-five newspaper articles which were regrded as serious violations of national security. It is not known how many US lives were lost s a result of these leakc, but the damage to US interests was in some cases considerable.

"Then on June 13, 1971 the administration was startled by the publication of what became known as the 'Pentagon papers' in the New York Times.  . . . Many of these documents were were classified Top Secret. Despite this, the New York Times not only published their contents but in some cases the originals. . . .The administration discovered that publication of the source notes of the Pentagon papers, if analyzed by KGB experts, could jeopardize a whole range of CIA codes and operations.  One of the most sensitive of these was the CIA's device for the recording the car-phone conversations of Poltiburo embers. So serious were the security breaches that at one point it was thought Ellsberg was a Soviet agent. . . .

"Kissinger warned him [Nixon] . . . The fact that some idiot can publish all the diplomatic secrets of this country on his own is damaging to our image, as far as the Soviets are concerned, and it could destroy our ability to conduct foreign policy. If the other powers feel that we can't control internal leaks, they will never agree to secret negotiations."

The parallel to current events could hardly be clearer.  We may well have long ago captured Bin Laden if it were not that our media reported that we tracked his cell phones -- of course, he quit using them.  Now Al Qaeda is aware of other ways that we are able to track their communications.  If public discussion continues on its current course, Al Qaeda will be able to learn even more details.

If you want to be put on the GIAC e-mail list, click contact the GIAC web master.  Please use GIAC as the first word in your subject line, to help ensure your message is not inadvertently rejected as spam.