The level of detail spilling out through media reports about crucial national security operations is raising the question of whether President Barack Obama's administration can keep a secret - or in some cases even wants to.

In just the past week, two tell-all articles about Obama's leadership as commander-in-chief have been published, dripping with insider details about his sleeves-rolled-up involvement in choosing terrorist targets for drone strikes and revelations about his amped-up cyber war on Iran.

Each article notes the reporters spoke to "current and former" American officials and presidential advisers, as well as sources from other countries.

"This is unbelievable ... absolutely stunning," a former senior intelligence official said about the level of detail contained in the cyberattack story.

The official noted that the article cited participants in sensitive White House meetings who then told the reporter about top secret discussions. The article "talks about President Obama giving direction for a cyberweapons attack during a time of peace against a United Nations member state."

The article follows on the heels of what many considered dangerous leaking of details about a mole who helped foil a plot by al Qaeda in Yemen. The revelations of the British national threatened what was described at the time as an ongoing operation.

"The leak really did endanger sources and methods," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California and chair of the Intelligence Committee, told Fox News.

The Yemen plot had many intelligence and national security officials flummoxed and angered by its public airing. Despite that, a senior administration official then briefed network counterterrorism analysts, including CNN's Frances Townsend, about parts of the operation.

freeman2 wrote:I think at some point the American people need to know what is going on with these programs (such as the drone attacks) so that they can approve them. I also think it is germane to the election in detailing the nature of President Obama's involvement in counter-terrorist operations. Look, you have to protect agents from harm because of disclosure, but I think in general disclosure is good. Secret intelligence operations while necessary need to be disclosed at the earliest point that such disclosure does not threaten either national security or the lifes of agents. Typically, intelligence agencies keep far more information under wraps than is necessary.

Election years play hell with secrecy. Facing a tough campaign, the Obama administration has begun leaking details of some of its most clandestine operations: the drone attacks in Pakistan and the cyber-war against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Over the past week, readers of The New York Times have learned that the president personally changed the definition of a “non-combatant” so as to reduce the number of non-combatant casualties in Pakistan.

They have learned that, yes, Stuxnet was a joint U.S.-Israeli operation, and that the U.S. has launched newer and more sophisticated computer attacks against Iran following Stuxnet. These stories were all produced with the active co-operation of the most senior White House officials.

Have you wondered how the U.S. managed to infect Iranian computers?


“[T]humb drives turned out to be critical in spreading the first variants of the computer worm; later, more sophisticated methods were developed to deliver the malicious code.” So reports the Times’ David Sanger in a front-page extract from his forthcoming book, Confront and Conceal.

But who inserted the thumb drives into the computers?

“The United States and Israel would have to rely on engineers, maintenance workers and others – both spies and unwitting accomplices — with physical access to the plant.”

Ah, that’s great to know. But inquiring minds in Tehran would like to know: Is there any daylight between the U.S. and Israel in this campaign? Any wedges that might be useful to play one ally off against the other?

“In the summer of 2010 … it became clear that the [Stuxnet] worm, which was never supposed to leave the Natanz [facility’s] machines, had broken free, like a zoo animal that found the keys to the cage.… An error in the code … had led it to spread.… It began replicating itself all over the world.… ‘We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,’ one of the briefers told the president … [vice-president] Biden fumed, ‘It’s got to be the Israelis,’ he said. ‘They went too far.’”

Perhaps you are wondering whether the U.S. has considered cyber-attacks on other countries? Look no further.

“American cyberattacks are not limited to Iran, but the focus of attention, as one administration official put it, ‘has been overwhelmingly on one country.’ … [However], ‘We’ve considered a lot more attacks than we have gone ahead with,’ one former intelligence official said.”

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted leaks to the press about a cyberattack against Iran and warned the disclosure of President Obama’s order could put the United States at risk of a retaliatory strike.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said the leak about the attack on Iran’s nuclear program could “to some extent” provide justification for copycat attacks against the United States.

“This is like an avalanche. It is very detrimental and, candidly, I found it very concerning,” Feinstein said. “There’s no question that this kind of thing hurts our country.”

The FBI opened its own probe Tuesday into who disclosed information on the Iranian attack, The Wall Street Journal reported. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Armed Service Committee promised hearings, while two Republican senators called for a special counsel investigation.
Several Democrats noted with alarm that the Iranian cyber leak is just the latest in a series of media reports that disclosed classified information about U.S. anti-terrorism activity.

“A number of those leaks, and others in the last months about drone activities and other activities, are frankly all against national-security interests,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “I think they’re dangerous, damaging, and whoever is doing that is not acting in the interest of the United States of America.”

danivon wrote:Are you assuming that the WH deliberately leaked, Steve?

Mr. Obama decided to accelerate the attacks — begun in the Bush administration and code-named Olympic Games — even after an element of the program accidentally became public in the summer of 2010 because of a programming error that allowed it to escape Iran’s Natanz plant and sent it around the world on the Internet. Computer security experts who began studying the worm, which had been developed by the United States and Israel, gave it a name: Stuxnet.

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.

Told it was unclear how much the Iranians knew about the code, and offered evidence that it was still causing havoc, Mr. Obama decided that the cyberattacks should proceed. In the following weeks, the Natanz plant was hit by a newer version of the computer worm, and then another after that. The last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium.

This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

bbauska wrote:Since you brought up the Plame incident...

Has the press brought much attention to the leaking of information, like it did with Plame? I think not...

Take your pick.

If it's not the WH, it's someone who has been on the inside. Furthermore, unless they're in the habit of spreading such info far and wide, one could reasonably conclude it was a small number who were in the room with the President

This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

rickyp wrote:steve

Take your pick.

If it's not the WH, it's someone who has been on the inside. Furthermore, unless they're in the habit of spreading such info far and wide, one could reasonably conclude it was a small number who were in the room with the President

Or we could carefully read the article you quoted which says::

This account of the American and Israeli effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program is based on interviews over the past 18 months with current and former American, European and Israeli officials involved in the program, as well as a range of outside experts. None would allow their names to be used because the effort remains highly classified, and parts of it continue to this day.

Israeli? European?

At a tense meeting in the White House Situation Room within days of the worm’s “escape,” Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, Leon E. Panetta, considered whether America’s most ambitious attempt to slow the progress of Iran’s nuclear efforts had been fatally compromised.

“Should we shut this thing down?” Mr. Obama asked, according to members of the president’s national security team who were in the room.