BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
I wonder if there is a family somewhere in America whose son’s or daughter’s life was put at risk because of the Wikileaks.org release last month of 76,000 classified documents?
I wonder if there is an Afghan family whose son’s or daughter’s life was put at risk because of those leaks that we are told contain the names of Afghani citizens who have tried to help U.S. soldiers in their war against the Taliban.
I’m the father of five and I wonder about those things because war must get very personal and very heart wrenching for parents with children—age doesn’t matter and adulthood doesn’t exist for parents—involved on the violent fronts of the conflict.
So it was especially alarming to read the reactions of those detached observers suffering from chronic arrogance and elitism who thought the release of the documents was boring, telling us little we didn’t know already. “Overall, though, the most shocking thing about the ‘War Diary” may be that it fails to shock, wrote columnist Eugene Robinson. His colleague Richard Cohen went further: “The news in that massive data dump…is that there is no news at all.”
Robinson at least tipped his hat to the profound implications of disclosing classified information.. Liberal Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel didn’t bother. Her perspective was all about what battlefield reports do to reinforce her opposition to the war and, more incredibly, what the disclosures say about the new media. “What to make of the leak itself?” she wrote. “Of course, more than a few commentators have called it a 21st century Pentagon Papers. That ‘21st century’ modifier may prove to be the most salient face of this story.” Huh?
I haven’t read the Wikileaks papers, but I doubt Robinson, Cohen and vanden Heuvel have either.
What I have read, however, leaves little doubt that their release and the pending release of the other 15,000 documents does compromise national security and does jeopardize the lives of Americans and Afghans. The documents apparently do provide insight into U.S. military operations that could be used against our troops on the ground. They may reveal secrets about our intelligence gathering methods and capability.
Again, I haven’t read them and I wouldn’t know that for sure if I had. But the probability of grave harm and death is there, given the conclusions of Defense Secretary Gates and Joints Chiefs Chairman Jim Jones. Jones said the release of the documents, “put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk.” Gates: “The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners…”
This isn’t about politics. This is not about whether we should be in Afghanistan or whether this is Obama’s war or Bush’s. This is about the release of classified documents in a manner that gives comfort to the enemy, engenders the lives of U.S. troops in the theater of war, and damages the security of the United States. Criminal acts. That’s what this is about, not whether it reinforces opposition to the war or whether the information is old news.
Our men and women over there deserve better from us. They deserve more than what appears to be a ho-hum reaction from the traditional media and their government. The traditional media should think again about their treatment of classified documents. The White House should reassess its weak-kneed response to the disclosures. The Justice Department should be actively investigating what seems to be treasonous behavior. The Department of Defense ought to be investigating the same. And, as a matter of record the White House should have at least made the effort to demand that the three media outlets with possession of the documents did not print them. The Congress should launch its own investigations into the leaks themselves, the role of the media, and the potentially lethal repercussions.
This should not pass from our consciousness. We should not let it go. My friend Tony Blankley calls it espionage. It is nothing less.
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.