In other words, Ricky, you can't splice parts of an article together and drum up whatever result you'd like.

Sassenach wrote:Surely if the office of the CoC decides to leak something by definition they have the right to do it ? We can argue whether it's something they ought to be doing, but I don't really see how it can be liable to prosecution of it's authorised by the President.

I don't think that's true. They would have to declassify it first.

Beyond that, talk about handing the Republicans the election.

Hypothetical situation wrote:Jay Carney: "Yes, the President leaked top secret info for political gain. What's the issue?"

I don't think that would play very well.

Did they need to be there to know about it?

danivon wrote:Did they need to be there to know about it?

You believe what you want to believe. As for me, I doubt the Europeans and Israelis can quote the President on a meeting they were not present for.

We'll probably never know, but the likelihood here is that Steve is broadly correct and the President's staff has deliberately chosen to leak this information for political gain so they could show Obama to be a foreign policy hawk. That might not be the case of course, there are any number of reasons why sensitive information can get leaked, but the logical way to look at these things is to ask the question 'who benefits ?', and in this instance there isn't really any obvious candidate except Obama himself.

That said, I don't really think it's a big deal. The Iranians must have already known who was behind Stuxnet and the likely means that it could have been transmitted to their nuclear systems. Likewise, the leak of the informant who stopped the bomb plot probably didn't come as a major surprise to the guys who organised it. The first question they'd have asked is what went went wrong and why, and the most obvious answer would have been that the guy who mysteriously vanished in the immediate aftermath of the failed bombing had sold them out. My reading of the situation is that Obama's team wanted something they could use to burnish his hardman credentials so they cast around looking for stuff they could leak which would make him look good without seriously compromising ongoing operations, and they came up with this stuff. It doesn't reflect especially well on them or him, but it's unlikely to be a major problem either.

steve

Okay, donkey, how many Israelis and Europeans were in this meeting:

As a good Christian I assume you mean Donkey as an affectionate nickname?
The "member's of the presidents national security team who were in the room .... " are the original source. But for whom were they a "direct source"?
There's nothing to indicate that any of the national security team spoke to the press directly. But its reasonable to assume that there was some chatter between them and their associates in Europe and Israel.
The actual conversation quoted according to "member's of the presidents national security team who were in the room .... " may be figments of the associate in European and Israel OR they may be fabrications of the US contacts of the associates.
Or they might be placed with the European and Israelis associates deliberately...hoping they'd be relayed onto the press.Or they might represent what actually happened. But because there is no direct attribution, you can't tell. You can only tell that a lot of the story came from Europe and Israel...

Unless there is eventually direct evidence somewhere that White House staff are telling tales out of school directly .... it could be any of the above...
Its not like the VP's chief of staff is having lunch with a Times reporter in order to relay information or anything like that is it? And if it were wrong that would be wrong wouldn't it?

Of course, some special prosecutor could put Sanger in jail until he reveals who his source is in the administration...
If thats indeed where the source is...
(And for the "tough guy stuff". it probably is.... The details of Olympic and Stuxnet? All kinds of potential sources.

I heard a little of an interview of Sanger on NPR's On Point this morning. It's worth tuning int. Re the leak, his narrative is that a software error led to the information leak as opposed to an administration official. In general, the reporters piece their information together from various sources, often by starting the conversation with "this is what I know" and hoping that each person will fill in details. The sense he gives is that it is a composite leak. He also indicates that the info that was leaked was already known by the Iranians so not of much value.

I'll leave views of his credibility up to the rest of you (or maybe the courts). I find that oftentimes listening to someone's voice gives it more weight than just reading what he said (or a 3rd party's interpretation thereof).

The interview was more broad than that, and in particular on Obama's foreign policy.

If Sanger's on the level, it doesn't sound like a deliberate leak at all.

Still, I suppose some will blame Obama for the coding error...

danivon wrote:If Sanger's on the level, it doesn't sound like a deliberate leak at all.

Still, I suppose some will blame Obama for the coding error...

Pfft.

If it's not a pattern of bragging, it's a pattern of incompetence:

“That was our holy grail,” one of the people involved in the Stuxnet operation told The Times. “It turns out there is always an idiot around who doesn’t think much about the thumb drive in their hand.”
According to Liam O Murchu, operations manager for the security response team at the U.S.-based cyber security firm Symantec and one of the first to analyze the Stuxnet code, that’s likely just how it happened: Someone who had been tricked into downloading Stuxnet onto their personal computer unknowingly transferred the malware to a thumb drive and then, after heading to work at the supposedly secure Iranian facility, plugged the thumb drive into the internal network, letting Stuxnet loose to wreak its havoc – all without knowing a thing was wrong.

There's no doubt that the whole "Obama decides personally" which terrorists get killed story was leaked by the White House, is there?

You believe what you wish, but I am certain of one thing: the more desperate Obama becomes, the move of this sort of thing we will see.

steve

There's no doubt that the whole "Obama decides personally" which terrorists get killed story was leaked by the White House, is there?

Aren't a lot of them "automatic choices"? I mean by rough reconning I think the Number Two Man in Al Queada has been assassinated about 17 times now....
I'd think this was a job promotion many would reconsider accepting....

rickyp wrote:Aren't a lot of them "automatic choices"? I mean by rough reconning I think the Number Two Man in Al Queada has been assassinated about 17 times now....
I'd think this was a job promotion many would reconsider accepting....

Some are "automatic."

However, why are they all being killed? Why not capture some of them?

So you quoted that why? The fact that spreading a virus relied upon incompetence by someone who works in an Iranian nuclear facility is related to Obama how? My last line was a throwaway about how some people will blame Obama for anything, but I didn't expect reality to match parody quite so soon. Well, done Steve!

Fact is, that's often how viruses spread, and IT security is largely a battle against such simple errors while hacking and cracking is mainly exploiting them rather than technical genius.

And I'm going to shock you here, Steve. It's not just public employees who are capable of the same kind of error. It's endemic among private industry as well.

And that ain't Barack's fault either, bub.

Doctor Fate wrote:However, why are they all being killed? Why not capture some of them?

Because it's not that easy? You know, highly valuable enemy asset, guarded by loyal followers, located in a foreign country, prepared to go down fighting...

It sends a pretty clear message, though, does it not, to kill anyone who rises to a particular level of leadership in an enemy organisation. Kind of like hanging Admirals who avoid conflict, it's pour encourager les autres.

Doctor Fate wrote:However, why are they all being killed? Why not capture some of them?

Some possible non-partisan explanations for you to consider---

First: Are you absolutely sure that we never capture any al Qaeda types?
Second: These guys presumably take measures to avoid being at a place/time known to us. When we do get operable intel it's likely to be because one's just been spotted someplace. How likely is it that he'll hang around long enough for us to mount a capture operation? We could miss him. But if we have a drone in the area and other conditions are ripe for a kill shot...
Third: These guys are fanatics and may be difficult to take alive even when completely surrounded.
Fourth: Perhaps - just perhaps - the value of having one alive and in our custody is less than you presume.