Julian Assange, proprietor of the WikiLeaks website, on which he
has already published about 76,000 classified documents relating to
the Afghanistan war, says he will within weeks publish another
15,000. Assange hopes these disclosures will lead to war crimes
trials to punish Americans.
The initial disclosure was comprised of raw battlefield
reports and other materials classified at the “secret” level. Many
of the documents reportedly contained the names and locations of
Afghans who have aided U.S. and NATO troops. The Taliban took note
and promised punishment of those people. Other damage done by the
publication of these documents is still being assessed.
The second round of disclosures may be worse. The Obama
administration seems content with chest-thumping threats of
possible prosecutions of Assange. Which, even if they are brought
successfully, seems a long shot given Assange’s life beyond U.S.
courts’ jurisdiction and thus won’t prevent disclosure.
This isn’t another “Pentagon Papers” case. In that 1971
case, the Supreme Court denied the Nixon administration’s effort to
restrain the New York Times from publishing secret papers
on the Vietnam War. The court said, specifically, that although it
ruled against that case, there were circumstances that a court
would block publication.
And now, given Assange’s actions are based outside the
U.S., in nations where Assange is safe from U.S. court action,
another “Pentagon Papers” case or even an attempt at prosecution
would be pointless. But we have a right to act to protect our
secrets. And act we must. So what should be done to prevent Assange
from publishing them?
A friend of mine, a more-or-less retired CIA paramilitary
operative, sees the solution in characteristically simple terms.
“We should go get him,” he said, speaking of Assange.
When my friend says “get him,” he isn’t thinking of
lawsuits, but of suppressed pistols, car bombs and such. But as
heart-warming as it is to envision Assange surveying his breakfast
cereal with a Geiger counter, we shouldn’t deal with him and
WikiLeaks that way.
At the risk of abusing the Bard, let’s “Cry
havoc, and let slip the geeks of cyberwar.” We need to
have a WikiLeaks fire sale.
A “fire sale” (as those who saw Die Hard 4 will
remember) is a cyber attack aimed at disabling — even destroying
— an adversary’s ability to function. Russia did this to Estonia
in 2007 and Israel apparently did this to Syrian radar systems when
it attacked the Syrian nuclear site later that year. The elegance
of this is that if we can pull off a decisive cyber operation
against WikiLeaks, it can and should be done entirely in
secret.
Plausible deniability, anyone?
And it’s easier said than done. WikiLeaks functions,
according to one expert I conferred with, through a network of
computer servers in several countries. Moreover, Assange has a
small army of “supporters” helping to hide and distribute
information. The servers’ network is hidden behind a wall of
anonymous communications links. That makes a cyber attack hard to
do, but not impossible.
There are legal restrictions that could prevent our
military cyberwarriors from holding the fire sale. Could, but
perhaps — if interpreted aggressively — wouldn’t. This would be a
good time to follow the military motto that it’s better to ask
forgiveness than permission. However, STRATCOM (Strategic Command)
hasn’t — according to one source — taken on any offensive
missions yet. And the new CYBERCOM boss, Gen. Keith Alexander,
hasn’t even set policy for how and when such offensive operations
could or would be done.
Which brings us back to the spooks. They have the
capability, but will they use it?
Probably not. The intelligence community is now ruled by
the Department of Justice with the backing of the White House.
Attorney General Eric Holder’s iron grip even overrides the legal
obligation the IC has to advise congressional intelligence
committees of its activities. One senior intelligence community
source told me that no information goes to Congress unless and
until Holder’s crew reviews and approves it.
As that source told me, Holder is interested in
prosecuting terrorists, not gathering intelligence. It stretches
credulity to believe that he — or Obama — would allow a fire sale
attack on WikiLeaks.
Over the past decade, America has been unwilling to defend
its secrets and punish leakers. Under Bush Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, fear of media reaction prevented the investigation of
some of the most damaging leaks in history, ranging from the
New York Times’s publication of the NSA Terrorist
Surveillance Program to the Washington Post’s publication
of the CIA’s secret prisons for terrorists. The people who leaked
those secrets were left unpunished by Gonzales’s Justice Department
refusal to subpoena the reporters and force disclosure of their
sources.
In Unrestricted Warfare, the highly controversial
2002 book by two active duty Chinese People’s Liberation Army
officers, Cols. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui pose the difference
between historical warfare and modern warfare by the juxtaposition
of two concepts. First, to “fight the fight that fits one’s
weapons”; second, “making the weapons to fit the fight.” They
insist that the modern battlefield is everywhere, from distant
nations to the streets of every city. And every computer
network.
China has probably invested more time and resources to
cyberwar than any nation. Its cyber attacks — espionage and
disruption — on our military, intelligence and defense contractors
occur every day. Liang and Xiansui note that computer hackers “…are
adopting a new tactic which might be styled ‘network guerilla
warfare.’” Just so.
The WikiLeaks publication of secret information is just
the beginning. There will be more leakers sending more secret
information to offshore websites for publication. Unless we
interdict and disrupt them, WikiLeaks and its progeny will have
free rein to publish any secrets that may fall into their hands, or
which they can convince or pay people to give them to publish. The
courts are not agencies of national defense. The military and
intelligence communities are and it is through them we should
act.
Our government has the obligation to act aggressively to
protect our secrets. We need to, as Liang and Xiangsui wrote, make
the weapons to fit the fight. That includes development,
deployment, and use of every cyber weapon our computer scientists
can devise to protect our secrets.
WikiLeaks should be hit with the cyber equivalent of
napalm. Let’s have that fire sale. Burn, baby, burn.
