Cross-posted from Pando Daily:
On Sunday, the White House accidentally leaked the name of the Kabul station chief — the CIA’s top-ranked spy in Afghanistan — to a press pool of about 6,000 reporters around the world who received a guest list of dignitaries who met Obama during his hit-it-and-quit-it visit to the war zone over the weekend.
“The name and title of the station chief were removed in a later pool report that urged reporters to ‘please use this list’ of attendees at the president’s briefing instead of the previous one,” reports The New York Times.
American media outlets agreed to the government’s request to forget what they’d seen.
Why the hell didn’t they publish the name?
The Washington Post said it was “withholding the official’s name at the request of White House officials who warned publication of his name could put the official and his family in danger.”
That’s untrue and illogical on several levels.
First: Either the guy’s cover has been blown or it hasn’t. Even if all 6,000 journos (plus whoever) agree to keep the spook’s ID on the down low, it’s too late. His name is out in the world. If Langley cares one whit for operational security, they’ll pull him out anyway.
Second: By several accounts, Mr. CIA Kabul was already well-known in Afghanistan. Trust me when I say, anything the American ex-pat community knows, the Taliban knows in greater detail. If they wanted to kill him, he’d already be dead.
Third: Does Langley really believe that 6,000-plus random civilians can be trusted with CIA secrets? If so, they’re even dumber than we thought.
If reporters were doing their jobs, they’d try to access government secrets, including classified information such as the identities of CIA operatives. When news like that falls into their laps, as in this instance, media organizations have an ethical obligation to their readers to disseminate it. They are, after all, the eyes and ears of those same readers.
Might someone die? Sure. That’s always a possibility when information about people is revealed in public. When a woman’s address appears next to her name in a public notice about her buying a house, her stalker might find her and kill her. Why should a CIA agent — a man who, incidentally, presides over the administration of an expansive torture facility and concentration camp — receive greater consideration than a female civilian?
And when did it become OK for the US media to ask permission from the US government before telling us what they know?
4 Comments.
There ya’ go again, making me think about stuff. 🙂
I see two different issues here. You’re absolutely correct that journalists should not take orders from the government, and there’s no way to keep a lid on something known to 6,000 people.
OTOH, I think that journalists may have an obligation to keep quiet in some circumstances. Take the example of the embedded reporter, tweeting the location of the patrol he’s with – that puts the lives of our servicemen in even greater danger than they already are. That’s altogether different from keeping quiet about war crimes – those should be reported, names should be named, and damn the consequences.
Robert Novak should have kept his damn mouth shut about Valerie Plame; The People had no *need* to know about her. We already know the CIA exists; even if we disagree with their agenda. Outing a specific agent didn’t give us anything we didn’t already have.
And on the third hand, I’m not too keen on trusting the ‘judgement’ of the media. Can’t win.
The missing element in your concept, I think, is newsworthiness.
Having received the name of Captain Spyman, the choice of the press shouldn’t be to whether to publish it or withhold it at the government’s request. Their obligation is to drill down on that information, try fitting it together with other known information, see if there’s anything relevant, then publish it.
Maybe somebody could sit down with Dick Cheney and get the name from him???
😀
Ted,
As you point out, the guy’s cover is either blown or not blown, and with 6,000 reporters on a feed, the only rational deduction is that the cover IS blown.
However.
That all presupposes that the guy’s cover wasn’t blown long, long ago. The way I see it, the “war” allows certain elements of both sides to have jobs, and be important. “They” known our operatives, “We” know theirs. For a small set of spies and diplomats and such, that’s much, much better because it allows information exchange and it also allows a “working relationship” to develop.
Everyone already knows who the local spy is. But if the officials have to take “official” notice, it’s a big pain in the ass for everyone. Remember, for a lot of people, all of this is a jolly game. They have less risk of dying than a cab driver, and they’ll retire with a fat pension and a whole mess of “war” stories.