No More Secrets

By Alan Caruba

There was a time when, if my Mother wanted to call my aunt in the same state, it was a “long distance” call. Now we live in a time when everyone is “connected” by cell phones and the Internet. The government deems cell phones so essential it gives them away free to “the poor.”

The explosion of “social networks” has us more “connected” and, to a large degree, it encourages the young and not-so-young to believe that every single thing they do each day is so important that it must be instantly communicated via the Internet.

I am not a Luddite who thinks that cell phones, the Internet, and other modern wonders are a bad thing. Much of my professional life is conducted via the Internet and often with people I have never met face to face. I have friends I have made via the Internet and others from a long ago past with whom I keep in contact via the Internet. Interpersonal communication is a good thing.

While Barack Hussein Obama has been busy transforming our nation into a Soviet-style Socialistic republic, the invention of the Internet and the likes of the late Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and the folks at Google have literally transformed our lives in ways we have only begun to comprehend.

In Egypt, Facebook brought out thousands of very unhappy Egyptians to Tahir square in Cairo where they proceeded to bring down one of the Middle East’s many dictators. The Internet exposed the global warming hoax when thousands of emails between its conspirators were leaked.

It gave the U.S. State and Defense Department folks a nightmare when a very low level Army kid passed countless secret dispatches on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Wikileaks. Private Bradley Manning is looking at life in prison for that escapade. When I served in the Army, I had a clearance for “secret” materials and thought I was hot stuff until I realized that they gave that clearance to anyone who had a pulse. Apparently they are still doing that.

The fact that so much of what governments do is based on secrecy explains why billions are spent annually on intelligence gathering—spying—on each other. You need only read the teachings of Sun Tzu, written some 2,500 years ago, to learn how essential spying is to any government.

On a personal level, we have entered an era when there are virtually no secrets—as often as not because people share their secrets with friends who share them with friends who share them with friends. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner could write a book on the subject.

So far as governments are concerned, we are in a new era of disinformation—lies—to counter leaks. All this information pouring forth on the Internet has increasingly marginalized the role of the press.

For those who recall Watergate, a 1970s scandal that forced a president to resign, we looked to newspapers to expose wrong-doing, but today the facts are only a computer click away and, as often as not, the press, with exceptions, is actively suppressing information it does not want us to know.

Recently, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio held a press conference to confirm that the birth certificate provided by the President of the United States is, in all likelihood, a forgery. There are serious questions about the legitimacy of his Social Security number, as well as data related to his passport.

The media, for the most part, ignored this story and that makes them part of what is surely the greatest conspiracy of the new century.

The larger question is why Sheriff Apaio’s information has not become the subject of a Congressional investigation. Why are so many Americans, elected representatives, law enforcement authorities, judges, willing to be complicit in a presidency that may have been acquired by deceit and, if so, whose exercise of power in implicitly criminal?

There may be no more secrets about Obama’s claim to hold the highest office in the land, but what good is it if nothing is done to end it?

What good is it if the Democratic Party is permitted to put his name on its ballot once again?

Why do we have a Constitution? Why do we still call ourselves a nation of laws?

This is how liberty dies. Through apathy and indifference.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Pfc Bradley Manning, A Warning Writ Large

By Alan Caruba

“All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.” --Sun-Tzu (--400 B.C.)

His cherubic face can be found on the many articles about an audacious assault on the military and diplomatic security of the nation. Liberals have adopted Private First Class Bradley Manning as their hero because he is gay and he despises America, two things about which they care deeply.

In a chat log published in June by Wired News, Manning “bragged to Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned him in, that he was going to unleash ‘worldwide anarchy in CVS (comma separated value) format.’”

For Manning the thrill came from contemplating that “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” adding “Everywhere there’s a US post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed.”

Manning’s infamy goes back to a story in the July 27, 2010 Wall Street Journal that reported “Military investigators are checking computers used by Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking classified information, to see if he is the source of thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks.”

According to Lamo, there is not any doubt as to the source of the data provided to WikiLeaks. Manning bragged about it to him. “No one suspected a thing,” said Manning, adding, “Kind of sad.”

What’s sad is that it will take months, perhaps years, before Manning is brought before a military tribunal and likely sentenced to life imprisonment instead of being put before a firing squad.

We are, after all, talking about one of the most massive acts of espionage against the United States in the modern era. Those defending Manning appear to be completely blind to that and, indeed, are accusing the U.S. of “torturing” Manning by keeping him in solitary confinement while he awaits courts martial.

Manning had been arrested in May on suspicion of leaking a video of a U.S. helicopter attack. Based in Iraq, he rapidly became the main suspect for the WikiLeak data dump.

Openly gay, despite the then-existing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that allowed him to remain in the Army, Manning had experienced rejection by a homosexual lover, declaring on his Facebook page that he was “livid” after being “lectured by ex-boyfriend.”

When you’re twenty-two years old, astonishingly immature, and “frustrated with people and society at large”, does that give you permission to betray your nation?

At about the same age, I was working in G-2 Army intelligence in a minor capacity. It never occurred to me to hand over secret documents to enemies of the nation. How many other young men over the years have been given this level of trust by their nation? A lot!

It took, however, just one Bradley Manning to think the rules of conduct, let alone his oath of service, could and should be set aside as a balm for his hurt feelings because his boyfriend dumped him.

This is why the armed forces resisted Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell when it was first foisted on them. From long experience, both military and civilian intelligence personnel knew and understood that homosexuals were particularly vulnerable to blackmail and, even as attitudes changed toward the gay and lesbian population, their emotional stability remained open to question.

It is why today’s frontline Marines in combat do not want to rely on homosexuals in their units, but the military has become so politically correct over the years that even an unstable Muslim Army major was allowed to serve until he killed thirteen servicemen and women at Fort Hood.

Military service is very different from civilian life. It has a different code of honor that dates back to the days of Sun-Tzu.

In a time when the U.S. military is engaged in a war with Islam-fascism and the world is seeking to counter it on every continent, the ancient admonitions about espionage and warfare are still true. There is no one more dangerous to our nation’s survival than a traitor.

Bradley Manning is every warning against permitting gays and lesbians to serve in the military writ large.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Is Anything Secret Anymore? Depends on Whose Secrets!

By Alan Caruba

The one thing that the pundicracy---the columnists, former government and other folk who express themselves in print and broadcast media---have missed about the latest WikiLeaks outrage is that, like the earlier one regarding Afghan military operations, both have been directed solely at the United States of America.

Are we really surprised that the Saudis want the United States to bomb the hell out of Iran’s nuclear facilities? Is it some kind of revelation that many leaders of many nations cordially dislike one another?

After growing tired of paying bribes to the Barbary pirates, Thomas Jefferson commissioned our first naval warships and sent in the U.S. Marines. Today we have two carrier groups off the coast of North and South Korea. As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose—the more things change, the more they stay the same.

It is instructive that Julian Assange, the face for WikiLeaks, has not hacked into and exposed the secret files of Russia, China, North Korea, or comparable nations that are unfriendly to American interests and policies.

The reason, simply stated, is that Assange knows we would be talking about him in the past tense if he had.


We have been told that these revelations have materially affected our relations with other nations, but it would be a good idea to keep in mind that they, too, have their phalanxes of spies and analysts who examine everything that is said and done by America, diplomatically, militarily, economically, and politically.

They are the counterparts of our Central Intelligence Agency that essentially does the same thing. These functions are also carried out by the Pentagon and the Department of State. Intelligence is the currency of national survival. Other U.S. agencies keep track of crop statistics, maritime activity, and just about anything and everything else that can be measured.

That said, we were absolutely astonished to learn that North Korea was so advanced in its production of nuclear weapons and missiles. We had no idea that Saddam Hussein had not stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, despite widely believed, but flawed intelligence. Et cetera. Et cetera.

The great revelation of 9/11 was that the U.S. generated tons of intelligence, much of which was, in spycraft terminology, “stove piped”; isolated within an agency and not shared. In the effort to make that intelligence more available to more people within our vast government, WikiLeaks found a way into it.

One of those ways was an openly gay Private First Class in the U.S. Army who, in less politically correct times, would never had been inducted or permitted to serve.

All intelligence is vulnerable to spies and turncoats. When it is stored digitally, it becomes even more vulnerable and that is the downside of the most extraordinary technology ever invented by man.

It is one thing to deliberately hack into it—something the People’s Republic of China, the Russians, and others try to do on a daily basis—but it is quite another to make it available to anyone who wants to look at it and I do mean anyone.

All of which brings us back to Julian Assange, a rather pathetic individual who would otherwise be ignored except for his “talent” for hacking other people’s computer data. Somewhere along the way Julian developed a deep animus for the United States of America.

No doubt he and others see America as the modern version of the Roman Empire, but Julian is likely unaware of the success of the Roman Empire, a republic that lasted some five hundred years. Indeed, Romans were always reluctant to go to war unless either attacked or, as was frequently the case, invited to offer the protection of Pax Romana.

There is only one nation on planet Earth to which small nations and large can turn for protection against the aggression, real or anticipated, of the current rogue’s gallery of despots and lunatics that threaten peace in the Middle East, those nations on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, nations bordering the Sea of Japan, and the Somali Peninsula, to name just a few places.

When and if the Swedes get through prosecuting Julian for alleged sexual crimes, the United States should reach out and bring him here for the crime of espionage. After which he should be subjected to a firing squad as an object lesson to others.

The most curious aspect of the WikiLeaks crimes is the failure of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice to take any action whatsoever. We are either witnessing that most inept DOJ in the history of the nation or one shot through with people who might actually sympathize with Julian Assange.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Iranian Hegemony, American Timidity

By Alan Caruba

Remember George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil”? Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Bush identified these three during a January 29, 2002 State of the Union speech. On March 20, 2003, the U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” We were assured that weapons of mass destruction would be found and, for the most part, few were.

The U.S. had been in Afghanistan since shortly after 9/11 in 2001, but Iraq became the focus and Afghanistan a backwater combat area where, as best as one can determine, nothing much has changed except that, reportedly, the U.S. is providing cover for meetings between the Taliban and President Karzai. The levels of corruption between these two are impossible to parse and, as usual, the only topic on the agenda is who gets to control the heroin industry that passes for Afghanistan’s Gross Domestic Product. Also reported is that Iran has been bribing top Afghan officials.

When I served in the U.S. Army, it was in a minor intelligence function as part of the Second Infantry Division. Its primary duty for a very long time has been the defense of South Korea where approximately 30,000 troops are stationed. They have been there since a truce was signed in 1953! The U.S. tends to stay on forever once we’ve invaded a country with the exception, of course, of Vietnam.

I mentioned my Army service only because the most recent intelligence “dump” by WikiLeaks evokes a visceral response to ever letting our enemies know anything about our conduct of the Iraq war and, in this case, the enemy is still Iran. It has been Iran since they took our diplomats hostage in 1979.

To my mind, WikiLeaks is engaged in an act of war against the United States, but I am sure that a legion of international lawyers would say they are not.

The worst part of all this is an analysis reported by an Israeli news agency, Debka File, over the past weekend. As often as not, one will find reports there that never seem to make it into the mainstream media here in the U.S.A.

For example, I suspect most Americans have no idea that we again have a second carrier group in the area of the Persian Gulf. That’s a lot of fire power and one or two such groups have been parked there for a very long time for a very good reason. Meanwhile, Egypt and Saudi Arabia just conducted “secret” war maneuvers together and it isn’t because either expects to be invaded by Bahrain.

The initial Debka File analysis of the U.S. classified documents “bared a catalogue of extreme abuse by Iraqi forces against fellow Iraqis and Iran’s deep involvement in terrorist operations against Americans and Iraqis alike—to both of which the U.S. turned a blind eye.”

Several very troubling facts emerge from the documents. U.S. troops “were instructed not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as abuses of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition.” That kind of directive comes down the chain of command from the very top.

Iraq became a sovereign nation on June 30, 2004 and the fighting among its elected leaders has not ceased for a day as to how the oil riches will be divvied up between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites.

The last elections were held on March 9, 2010 and Iraq still does not have a functioning government. In the days when Saddam Hussein ran everything, elections involved a 99% vote for the psychopath, but this year’s election involved 325 seats in the parliament and a coalition government has not been decided upon for the last eight months.

Granting that Saddam was evil incarnate, he was nonetheless a bulwark against Iranian ambitions. He had invaded Iran in the 1980s and spent eight years trying to win a war against it. Failing that, he turned around and invaded Kuwait, drawing the U.S. into the first invasion, but one in which he was allowed to remain in power after Iraqi troops were pushed out of Kuwait.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has had the backing of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In the past he has had ties to Iran because both are Shiites and, according to Debka File he “headed Iran-backed Shiite terror networks responsible for political assassinations on his orders.”

The new intelligence data reveals even more about the extensive involvement of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Al Qods Brigades in attacks on American forces in Iraq. Over the course of the conflict there since 2003, American troops suffered 4,287 dead and 30,000 wounded in combat.

Out of all this expenditure of American treasure and lives, Iran has emerged with a strong network of puppet militias in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. It has forged strong ties with Syria. It has a network of allies inside Iraq. And it has pursued its quest for nuclear weapons and the development of the missiles to deliver them as far away as parts of Europe.

All of this suggests that America’s expressed policy of establishing a democratic Iraq and the total lack of confrontation with Iran adds up to failure at this point. The problem with that assertion, however, is that Saddam was an unpredictable, disruptive figure who had to be neutralized.

It looks like George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil is still very much intact and an understandably war-weary United States is leaving a battlefield whose nations were created in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles way back when Woodrow Wilson was the president.

As the French say, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

WikiLeaks' Spoiler and Sponger

By Alan Caruba

Julian Assange first came to public notice when he was caught hacking into the computer networks, including that of Nortel, a Canadian communications firm. In 1995 he escaped prison time after admitting to twenty-five charges. He was fined and released.

He has since made headlines worldwide as the spokesperson for Wikileaks, the Internet site that dumped 79,000 pages of classified data related to the conflict in Afghanistan. As this is written, the Taliban is going through it to find the names of informers who assisted U.S. and NATO forces deployed there.

As noted in a commentary in the August 2nd Wall Street Journal by L. Gordon Crovitz, “Taliban leaders have since told Britain’s Channel Four they are using WikiLeaks data to hunt down Afghans who helped NATO. Taliban ‘justice’ including hanging, beheading and strapping people to explosives and detonating them in public.”

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 and Assange is a member of its nine-member advisory board. He comes from what I call the Daniel Ellsberg School of Treachery, named after the man who released the “Pentagon Papers” to The New York Times in 1971. The Vietnam War was already winding down. Nixon’s response was to enjoin the Times from publishing, but a 6-to-3 Supreme Court decision cleared the way.

The Pentagon Papers confirmed what Americans already knew by then. The Vietnam War had begun in earnest with a lie by President Lyndon Johnson and had failed thanks to various corrupt South Vietnamese governments despite having 537,000 U.S. troops there by 1968. By 1971, troop levels had fallen to 213,000. The war was over but for the complete withdrawal.

The leaked information was offered to The New York Times, Britain’s The Guardian, and Germany’s Der Spiegel. Drawing a lesson from the Pentagon Papers, the White House and Pentagon offered a very muted response to the WikiLeak posting. The news was met with a public shrug.

Eventually, but never soon enough, our troops and those of our NATO allies will leave Afghanistan. The bloodletting in Afghanistan and elsewhere throughout the Middle East will continue because it is enslaved by a seventh century religion intent on imposing its will on the world. Do not doubt we shall have to return at some point.

Reportedly, U.S. officials want to apprehend Assange so it is no surprise he has not made any recent appearances here, although I saw him on television when he granted an interview to the BBC. Being anti-war is a reflexive and fashionable liberal preference, but I don’t know many people who are actively pro-war. Remember, though, U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and later Iraq were initially popular.

The Telegraph, a London newspaper, reported “(Assange) has already said he would ‘deeply regret’ any lives being lost as the result of the leak, but stood firm in his conviction that it was a risk worth taking because of its importance ‘to the history of the war’.”

The Afghan war has been going on now since 2001 and, other than the Taliban, there are few people, including those charged with waging it, who want it to continue.

The data Assange received is widely believed to have come from a young American intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning. If he is found guilty by a military court, it constitutes an egregious act of treason.

Assange’s receiving and disseminating classified information should merit putting his name on an Interpol most wanted list, but I doubt that the current administration will pursue him. At the very least he has aided and given comfort to our nation’s enemies.

Aside from his obvious skills as a hacker and an inventor of free software, Assange’s life would likely be described as a loser. Born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1971, his parents ran a touring theatre company. He has said that was enrolled in 37 schools and six universities during his early years. He appears to have no real roots.

An article in The New Yorker reported that he was married to his girlfriend in “an unofficial ceremony” at the age of 18 and they had a son. She left him when the Australian Federal Police came knocking on the door to charge him with hacking.

Hackers are, by definition, a loathsome and dangerous group. They are the digital version of break-and-entry criminals.

WikiLeak is funded by the Berlin-based Wau Holland Foundation. Given Assange’s work history, it should come as no surprise that he lives off the donations of those who think making war against the enemies of the West is a bad thing.

In the meantime, Assange continues to travel the world pretending to be a crusader seeking only the truth.

The truth is that he is a spoiler, an intruder, and a sponge off of mushy liberals who members of the Taliban and al Qaeda would gladly behead.

When U.S. and NATO troops do finally leave Afghanistan, a massacre will ensue.

© Alan Caruba, 2010