CIA launches task force to assess impact of U.S. cables' exposure by WikiLeaks

Washington Post ^ | December 22, 2010 | Greg Miller

[lbryce]

The CIA has launched a task force to assess the impact of the exposure of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and military files by WikiLeaks.

Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F.

The irreverence is perhaps understandable for an agency that has been relatively unscathed by WikiLeaks. Only a handful of CIA files have surfaced on the WikiLeaks Web site, and records from other agencies posted online reveal remarkably little about CIA employees or operations.

Even so, CIA officials said the agency is conducting an extensive inventory of the classified information, which is routinely distributed on a dozen or more networks that connect agency employees around the world.

And the task force is focused on the immediate impact of the most recently released files. One issue is whether the agency's ability to recruit informants could be damaged by declining confidence in the U.S. government's ability to keep secrets.

"The director asked the task force to examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency's foreign relationships or operations," CIA spokesman George Little said. The panel is being led by the CIA's Counterintelligence Center but has more than two dozen members from departments across the agency.

To some agency veterans, WikiLeaks has vindicated the CIA's long-standing aversion to sharing secrets with other government agencies, a posture that came under sharp criticism after it was identified as a factor that contributed to the nation's failure to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Even while moving to share more information over the past decade, the agency "has not capitulated to this business of making everything available to outsiders," said a former high-ranking CIA official who recently retired.

[lbryce]

One issue is whether the agency's ability to recruit informants could be damaged by declining confidence in the U.S. government's ability to keep secrets.

Yes. I can definitely understand the agency's inability to ascertain any connection between recruiting informants overseas, being able to demonstrate, offer iron-clad assurances that they have nothing to fear by gathering, sharing intelligence with the US govt and the declining confidence in the US government's ability to keep secrets.

That's why they get paid the big bucks pondering the mysterious, inherent dangers of the way of the world that the rest of us are clueless to resolve. < /sarc off>

[maggief]

“WTF?”

[bert]

Excerps from the eventual report:

“All the horses, including both palominos, escaped the barn through the open doors.”

-snip-

“The middle strap hinge on the right leaf was found to have excessive rust and one of the 4 lag screws was loose in the wood door structure. It was the top most screw. A similar lag screw in the frame portion was missing it was located lower center. The screws are 1” x #12 hex head”

-snip-

“The critical latching mechanism was examined with extreme care and found to be intact and effective when latched. Although the latch mechanism was somewhat lose, showing some wear and abrasion around the pivot pin and some dirt and caked grime over the vertical part, it was in good working order.”

-snip-

” the investigation discovered no mechanical failures or structural failures and the cause has been attributed to error by stable personnel and there is no reason to believe the investigating agency played any part in the errors.”

[lbryce]

Written with all the passion, emotion of aliens describing the process of human procreation. :-)