I we look at The Apache helicopter and Australian internet plans leaks, the government was trying to do something wrong, which Wikileaks exposed. Now they have been declared threat to national security. Great progress in hypocrisy.
A less generous interpretation:
* Wikileaks leaked the video that accompanies a detailed transcript (with quotes) of the same video that appeared in the Washington Post many months beforehand --- a PR black eye to be sure, but in no way a revelation.
* Wikileaks has in fact cultivated confidential sources inside DoD and military service agencies that are talking about forwarding cables and other TS-classified material, and is in fact part of a grave threat to national security (which, true, the real "threat" is clearly the negligent lapses in operational security that allow someone like Manning to leak cables in the first place).
In other words: Wikileaks is less valuable to society than it seems, and at the same time the government has a legitimate (if misdirected) concern with them.
I don't care that much either. On net, I think Wikileaks is a good thing, but I've never donated and never would until they are more transparent about their own operations. Re that video, the first half wasn't what disturbed me, but rather the firing of the missiles into the building in the second half.
But there's an obvious strategy for the US to discredit Wikileaks, and that's to find someone - anyone - that appears to have leaked to them, and come down hard on them. Finding an oddball kid suits the story they want to tell, irrelevant of how guilty he may be. But the Wired stuff is just off the wall odd.
I'm working under the assumption that someone named Manning did in fact do something stupid with Wikileaks, which did indeed encourage him to do that stupid thing. That Wikileaks is encouraging stupid people to do stupid things is something that bothers me about Wikileaks; that stupid people are given access sufficient to do stupid and damaging things is something that bothers me about the DoD.
As to evidence (in the legal sense), I don't have any one way or the other that Manning had anything to do with the leak. I just have media reports, which sound really weird, which makes me not give them much weight.
The only direct source of much of the rumours seems to be the completely unbelievable Wired story. The Salon story on Wired's reporting is the primary reason I don't trust it, nor anything implied by it on other sites:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18...
And to support that argument, you're citing Glenn Greenwald?
If something was leaked, but noone can point to it, or the consequences of it, is it really leaked?
The way you phrase your sentence about Glenn Greenwald, you seem to imply that I should know something about him. What are you imputing?
It also seems an ad hominem attack. I cited the article as reason to doubt the Wired story; but the article should be attacked on its own merits. And the reason to doubt the leak of TS cables is because I haven't seen evidence that they've been leaked. The video certainly was leaked - I saw it - but I've seen not a peep of these alleged cables.
It doesn't make any sense. Why would a 22-year old kid have access to thousands of top-secret cables? Why should we trust an attention-seeking ex-convict who says he had an IM with a leaker who spontaneously contacted him for the first time ever (randomly choosing him from twitter #wikileaks, of all things), and boasted to him that he leaked such cables? When Wikileaks denies that they have such cables?
When these stories come up in the news, who benefits?
The US is in no danger of being attacked or invaded by anyone; one cannot say the same about other countries with respect to the US.
Even something as substantial as 9/11 was only a crime - a monstrous crime - but certainly not an act of war. There isn't any actor with the capability or will to do any serious damage to the US that wouldn't be annihilated by nuclear retribution; the US's security derives from its obvious and plain-sight strengths, not anything it keeps secret.
The real threat to national security is the predominance of special-interest groups who are currently in control of the US Military machine, having it fight un-just, disgusting wars, in the name of the United States of America.
The true threat to national security is the Pentagon itself, which simply wouldn't be necessary if it weren't creating its own reasons for war around the world.
You want real national security? Stand down your soldiers, America. That is the only true way to be secure in your beds, Americans.