Leaked CIA Red Cell memo on USA 'exporting terrorim'

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/CIA_Red_Cell_Memorandum_on_United_States_%22exporting_terrorism%22,_2_Feb_2010

by dsplittgerber • 16 years ago

27 20 16 years ago

tptacek5• 16 years ago

Shocking. Some people who participate in organizations that the United States recognizes as terrorists are United States Citizens. Citizens have helped the Taliban, have helped Islamist attacks in India, and have helped the IRA. So: what if India or the UK decide that we don't care about those people, but instead only the al Qaeda or IRA activities that target US assets?

There, I've summed up the new leak.

Naturally, that's not how WikiLeaks sums it up. They're not bound to the actual text, but rather to the contours of the narrative they're trafficking in; in that narrative, it's not random crazy Islamists or Irish Nationalists joining terrorist causes, but rather the US "exporting" it. In the document, the word "export" occurs only in a quoted label, and is predicated --- 'if the US was perceived as an "exporter of terrorism"' --- because of people's perceptions of random crazy people in a country of 300 million people.

According to the WaPo's last investigation, 850,000 people have some form of "Top Secret" clearance. It's a wonder everything labeled "Top Secret" isn't leaked. This isn't even that; it's "Secret: Don't Circulate To Foreigners" (as it concerns foreign policy and perceptions).

I think the unnamed official speaking to NBC summed this up nicely: 'This is not exactly a blockbuster paper'.

cma• 16 years ago

"Top Secret" typically still has "need-to-know" restrictions.

InclinedPlane3• 16 years ago

Does anyone have a good argument as to why I should take wikileaks any more seriously than, say, the drudge report, or the enquirer? In comparison even BoingBoing seems like a greatly more legitimate unbiased, hard-news organization.

dsplittgerber2• 16 years ago

With WikiLeaks you get the original documents. Please show me _any_ news organization that provides original source documents for inspection by the public.

Wikileaks deserves some critical commentary, granted. But comparing it to "news organizations" like boingboing just makes it seem like it's falling out of favor with the "internet intelligentsia".

MichaelSalib2• 16 years ago

Maybe you shouldn't be reading Wikileaks at all. If you can't distinguish Wikileaks from the Drudge report or Boing Boing then I'd say you're not the kind of person who would benefit from reading leaked copies of classified documents. Instead, I'd suggest you stick to articles in the New York Times or Washington Post or other major newspapers that are based on Wikileaks data. I mean, since all the big papers have been publishing articles that heavily use Wikileaks data, presumably they find WL to be somewhat trustworthy. Or do you have difficulty distinguishing between the NYT and the Drudge Report as well?

anon114• 16 years ago

Maybe you missed the official acknowledgment that a priority of the US Government is to continue widespread extrajudicial "detention, transfer and interrogation" of "suspects", with the valued co-operation of foreign allies - without any kind of reciprocal agreements, of course.

tptacek5• 16 years ago

Maybe I missed that because that's not what the document says. But of course, the fact that Wikileaks posted it and pasted that summary on it is why we're having this discussion, not because of the document itself.

OpieCunningham3• 16 years ago

I fail to see how the Wikileaks summary is misleading.

Contrary to your statement, the word "export" occurs multiple times and often outside "a quoted label". The start of the answer to the primary question posed by the document is:

"Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon..."

The document itself plainly states that there is an American export of terrorism. Indeed, the entirety of the document is about the implications of knowledge of the fact that some terrorists do come from America and affect other parts of the world: exported.

Perhaps the narrative you're tracking in is the one where Wikileaks is bad, and therefore you've decided to interpret their summary as if they claimed the U.S. had a policy of exporting terrorism. Clearly the Wikileaks summary made no such claim, and instead is a fairly accurate summary of the leaked document itself.

tptacek5• 16 years ago

You just quoted Wikileaks own summary of the document, and not the document itself.

I rest my case.

sdurkin• 16 years ago

Another big yawn from Wikileaks. This could have been written by any college poly sci student as a B- paper.

Leaked CIA Red Cell memo on USA 'exporting terrorim'

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