As an example there's a short discussion in the recent movie The Post where Post reporters are trying to figure out who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Ben Bagdikian says something like these guys are always a bit of a showboat and it leads him to remember Ellsberg at Rand.
EDIT to add: the CIA is interested in why people leak because the #1 job of the CIA is to create leakers in other countries.
You mention locking people up, but that is not the CIA's job. The FBI is the counter-intelligence lead in the U.S.
The CIA only locks up brown people and tortures them in Thailand (star). It refers US leakers to the FBI which throws them into lonely prisons, terrifies, and abuses them.
EDIT: (star) Or rather it did. That's what Gina Haspel, our new CIA director nominee, is famous for.
EDIT2: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-the-washin...
A conflict of interest would be relevant, in different ways, if it was current with the events that the movie is about, or if the movie was produced by the Post.
But neither of those is true, sonit seems to be a non-sequitur.
Hollywood has a long history of entanglement with the CIA and DoD in general. (How do you think so many war movies get access to equipment?) The Post was produced by Stephen Spielberg, an entertainer, not a typical careful documentarian. The social purpose of the movie is to soothe liberals at a time when their minds are being fractured by DJT and cries of "fake news". I wouldn't put it past Hollywood and the military to take this prime opportunity to insert propaganda via framing and selection of quotes.
Of course, I can't prove it that this is how this quote came to be, but what I can with certainty is to be skeptical of taking away core moral and factual positions from mass political entertainment and be doubly skeptical of claims (referring to the original claim sans movie) that come from the intelligence services (whose job it is to lie cheat and steal, duh).
EDIT: Here's an example of the CIA getting involved in the movie business https://www.salon.com/2015/09/11/the_cias_insidious_hollywoo...
They are a great example of an organization hiring the best and brightest, only to be dimmed by org and political structures.
This is not a recent thing. I believe they blew up a Russian refinery with a sweet exploit in he 80s. But other than that, I’m not sure why anyone would see them other than a bumbling comedy of politics.
To be fair, that is also a reason why they would have a motive to spread misinformation about what they believe motivates leakers, since information about their beliefs on that matter give target nations clues to both actual vulnerabilities and CIAs likely means of attempting to exploit them.
Joking aside. I think the difference lies in how easily an adversary can refute the information. You can just call up a library or an embassy to verify most claims in the world factbook. How would you get access to a wide selection of leakers?
also, just because an adversary is denying information does not mean that they themselves are being truthful.
After throwing out the all but three of the original 100 people saying one of the other 9 were the best skin cream.
People have been trying much harder and more successfully to discredit Snowden using other arguments.
The characterisation actually makes me more hopeful for the future of whistle blowing.
I never understood why Snowden and Manning are put on equal footing in that regard.
Now granted, the mission plans would have been pretty interesting to the other team (I almost wrote the word enemy, but I don't believe that to be accurate, but that's irrelevant to this post), but those were printed out and ended up laying around on desks, all the platoon leaders / platoon sergeants had them, and despite best efforts to keep track of that stuff it is never 100%.
Granted, Chelsea may have had WAY more access than I did, I'm not trying to speak about things I have no facts regarding. I am trying to say that I find it VERY hard to believe that an E-4 intel soldier (or even most O-6's, to be honest) would have access to anything that could compromise field intelligence activities or actionable information about the goings on with special forces teams. The overwhelming majority of the information we had on SIPR (basically the 'secret' internet for USG, the computers with red cables coming out of them) relevant to the local theater of operations was an insanely disorganized mess of reports following missions, almost none of which had anything juicy in them.
Having become a software engineer and math guy after getting out of the service, looking back on the "information" available to US and allied commanders in Afghanistan I'm 100% certain that my current boss would fire me for delivering such a mess.
EDIT Looked up Manning's unit level: Full Disclosure: Chelsea Manning worked in a Brigade level S-2 (intel section), and I was only at Battalion, so she definitely had better systems / access than I did. I still doubt she could find out what Jason Bourne was up to.
No. Foreign agents or sources working with US intelligence (which are not the same as operatives) maybe.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/20/chelsea-mann...
The strongest common trait in leakers is belief. They believe in something. They aren't willing to sit back and witness some people damage society as a whole.
Manning at least spent her day in court. Yeah they are different, Snowden was a coward. If he truly did it for the good of the world, he'd turn himself in because of the reward he has already gotten by sharing information he felt like the world needed.
" If he truly did it for the good of the world, he'd turn himself in because of the reward he has already gotten by sharing information he felt like the world needed."
This is offensively manipulative nonsense. Wanting to avoid being thrown in a hole and tortured is a normal human response and utterly orthogonal to whether his motives were pure or not.
Here is some stateside coverage analyzing why he did something so stupid: http://theweek.com/articles/463249/why-edward-snowden-spilli...
"In the bigger scale of things, Sino-US relations outweigh any information Snowden may have. It is also impractical for China to hope Snowden will co-operate with us. If he wanted to do that, he'd have flown to Beijing," said an expert in Shanghai who requested anonymity."
Looks more like he revealed that we were spying on everyone and ran to Hong Kong because they were a neutral party and you want to spin this into he sold us out to the Chinese to me.
Why did he reveal Chinese telecom targets then? The "expert in Shanghai" is clearly wrong from Snowden's perspective. Hong Kong is outside the Great Firewall and so Snowden felt less hypocritical living in Hong Kong, but it is still under Chinese rule, so he hoped to get Chinese protection by leaking state secrets to them.
You must be heavily influenced by things you’ve read/heard others say.
As a human being - just imagine what you might do... Perhaps you’ll begin to realise how palpably absurd your suggestion that someone must be a coward for not taking their beating is.
Shocker, people have different opinions on the internet. Most intelligent people do in fact think for themselves.
> You must be heavily influenced by things you’ve read/heard others say.
I'm heavily influenced by taking the same oath as he once did and Manning did. You are given a choice to have a TS/SCI clearance, you can say "no thanks" at many many points in the process. Once given that choice it is up to you do decide whether or not you follow the rules you signed up for. He chose to be treasonous, much like Manning. I'm not arguing about whether that choice was the right one or not, that does not matter. Unlike Manning, he gave intelligence away to foreign countries in hopes they would protect him and he didn't have his day in court. He life is ruined because his plan backfired, that is on him, no one else.
So yes, I'm heavily influenced, but by experiences I know about, unlike most. He committed treason, that fact is inarguable, and I believe he should've stayed home and argued his case in court. Manning did, she is now a free woman.
I know I'm not going to change your mind, that isn't my intention, but I'm also going to defend my own intelligence. Lifetip: not everyone who disagrees with you is a moron. Have a nice day.
I'd assume most intelligence services love leakers. They just want to be the recipient, not the source.
The leakers that come to mind immediately are Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning whom both suffered greatly for their leaks (Snowden had to leave his life behind and Manning was kept in isolation and had her medical needs neglected amongst other things). While they both may have wanted to be recognized as having done something good, they also clearly wanted to let the public know what the government was doing in their name.