US Officials Leak Information That’s More Sensitive Than
Anything Snowden Leaked
By Trevor Timm
May 19, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - Over the weekend, the US
government
announced that special forces soldiers entered Syria to conduct a raid that
killed an
alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials
leaked classified information to the New York Times that’s much more sensitive
than anything Edward Snowden ever revealed, and it serves as a prime example of
the government’s hypocrisy when it comes to disclosures of secret information.
Here’s how the New York Times
described how the US conducted this “successful” raid:
The raid came after weeks of surveillance of Abu Sayyaf,
using information gleaned from a small but growing network of informants the
C.I.A. and the Pentagon have painstakingly developed in Syria, as well as
satellite imagery, drone reconnaissance and electronic eavesdropping,
American officials said. The White House rejected initial reports from the
region that attributed the raid to the forces of President Bashar al-Assad
of Syria.
Read that carefully and pretend it was Snowden who leaked this
information, instead of nameless Pentagon spokesmen. US officials would be
screaming from the rooftops that he leaked extremely timely and sensitive
intelligence (it was literally only hours old), that he will cause specific
terrorists to change their communications behavior, and most importantly, he put
the lives of informants at risk. (Note: none of Snowden’s leaks did any of these
things.)
Yet despite the fact that the ISIS raid was discussed on all
of the Sunday shows this week, no one brought up anything about this leak.
Contrast that with Snowden’s revelations, where government officials will use
any situation to say the most outlandish things possible in an attempt to smear
his whistleblowing—regardless of their basis in reality. Take former CIA deputy
director and torture advocate Mike Morrell, for example, who is currently
on a book promotion tour and has been preposterously suggesting that
Snowden’s leaks
somehow led to the rise of ISIS.
For the sake of hypothetical argument, let’s take Morrell’s
claims at face value. Let’s put aside the fact that, despite their “sky is
falling” rhetoric, the US government
has consistently refused to release specific information showing that
terrorists have “changed their behavior” due to the Snowden leaks, and that
terrorists were sophisticated users of encryption for more than a decade
before anyone heard Snowden’s name. Let’s also ignore that the US government
has been caught blatantly exaggerating how leaks have “damaged” national
security in the past, and that officials have already admitted their nightmare
scenarios in this case
have not actually come to pass.
Here is what
Morrell told NPR when asked about Edward Snowden and the damage he thinks he
caused to national security:
So I can't get into specifics, but I'll tell you that
there was a program that he disclosed that was vital to the United States'
ability to see what terrorists are doing. And they all changed their
communication habits because of that disclosure - al-Qaida in Pakistan,
al-Qaida in Yemen and al-Qaida in Iraq, which morphed into ISIS. So there is
no doubt in my mind that that change in behavior on the part of al-Qaida in
Iraq and ISIS contributed to ISIS's rise.
And here’s what he
said on 60 Minutes the same week:
"What Edward Snowden did has put Americans at greater risk
because terrorists learn from leaks and they will be more careful, and we
will not get the intelligence we would have gotten otherwise."
Every single thing Morrell said applies to what US officials
leaked this weekend, if not more so. But since the leak about the ISIS raid was
meant to glorify the Obama administration, instead of embarrassing it or
exposing wrongdoing, everyone in the US government will pretend like it never
happened.
Either leaks exposing the “sources and methods” of
surveillance are damaging to national security or they are not. Administration
officials can’t have it both ways.