Monday, November 29, 2010

Wikileaks

All of today's handwringing about the Wikileaks disclosures reminds me that I must refresh myself on the history of the Pentagon Papers leaks 40 years ago. I wonder what we failed to learn from history on this one.

That said, all of today's attention seems to be focused on the embarrassing and in some cases, life threatening disclosures. Personally, I am more concerned about how all those emails got into the Wikileaks hands in the first place. I suspect that as a general proposition, our State Department and and other services that gather intelligence have gotten too large and unwieldy. The larger the organization, the more likely moles will get jobs there. They need to become more lean and mean. That does not wholly solve the problem, but it is a start.

Of course, less government is always a good thing (although there are certainly other agencies that I would prefer to start with -- Education, Agriculture, Transportation, EPA, CPSC, NLRB, FDA and on and on in the alphabet soup).

The actions of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange endangering lives are reprehensible. The actions of the Obama Administration in response are anemic.

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