Washington Post Set To Publish Database Outing Top Secret Facilities and Contractors

Apparently treason is the highest form of patriotism.

The Diplomatic Security Bureau at State sent out a notice Thursday to all department employees warning them to protect classified information and reject inquiries from the press when the new web feature goes live.

"The Washington Post plans to publish a website listing all agencies and contractors believed to conduct Top Secret work on behalf of the U.S. Government," the notice reads. "The website provides a graphic representation pinpointing the location of firms conducting Top Secret work, describing the type of work they perform, and identifying many facilities where such work is done."

According to the notice, the Post used only open-source information to compile its site. However, if some of that open-source information turns out to have been classified, its publication by the Post doesn't change that classification, the State Department emphasized.

I'm not throwing the treason thing around lightly or as a joke. We are at war and as the Director of National Intelligence wrote to contractors today...

Foreign intelligence services, terrorist organizations, and criminal elements will have potential interest in this kind of information. It is important that companies review their overall counterintelligence posture to ensure that it is appropriate. Specifically, we recommend that companies affected by this publication and website assess and take steps to mitigate risk to their workforce, facility and mission, to the extent consistent with your contractual relationship with ODNI. These steps should include re-enforcement of security and counterintelligence protections and steps to enhance workforce awareness. CI and security events related to the publication of these articles and website should be reported through normal company channels to the MSC/Security office. For the time being, thresholds should be lowered to aggressively report anomalous behavior.

Even if it turns out it's all open source material, that doesn't change anything. The act of collecting and organizing it is a huge aid and comfort to our enemies. We spend billions of dollars a year on this sort of activity and the WaPo is just doing it free of charge. It's like they are serving as the intelligence analysis division for every terror and criminal group out there.

I guess it's good to know that the Washington Post doesn't only hate America when Republicans are in office.

A free society is always going to have tension between keeping secrets and freedom of information necessary for the electorate to make informed decisions. But the kind of crap we've seen for the last 8 or 9 years is simply outrageous. No one benefits from it except the terrorists (and reporters who collect big Pulitzer bonuses). Bush made a tremendous mistake by not coming down hard with prosecutions when this sort of shit started happening regularly during his administration.

Just for fun...Wednesday marked the 7 year anniversary of the greatest act of treason in American history, Bob Novak published the name of Valerie Plame. Funny what gets some people outraged.

posted by DrewM. at 11:58 AM

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