A group of mostly retired U.S. Special Forces and intelligence operatives from the CIA have banded together to form an organization called OPSEC (Short for Operational Security) that is highly critical of the disclosure of operational secrets for political gain - especially those secrets leaked by the White House since the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Watch their video on You-Tube - Click Here
It is a compelling argument, and as someone who has worked in the television news media for more than 30-years, I can see both sides. Of course, the safety and security of our armed forces is paramount, and nothing resembling operational security, methods or sources, should be reported by the media. But it's hard not to when that information comes directly from the President of the United States.
However, in a free and open society, with a free press, even if the President hadn't said a word, information about the bin Laden raid would have come out eventually. The event was just too important for the American people to understand and digest. And the information including operational details would have been reported eventually anyway.
But, there would have been a delay if the President had withheld the information for a day or two, allowing Special Forces to act on the intelligence gathered at the bin Laden compound. They may have been able to take down a few more bad guys before they scattered. That would have been worth a couple of days of silence, don't you think?
And as a news-person and an American, I am clearly not happy about the White House using operational details as a re-election strategy. Describing how the president decides what targets to attack with Predator drones is a huge miscalculation that may come back to bite us someday. I hope not. But clearly, the only reason that information was leaked was to help the President look tough on national security, to show that we are going after and killing terrorists who have a link to al Qaeda or the 9/11 attacks. Somebody needs to tell the President to shut up.
Watch the video - OPSEC makes a very compelling argument.
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