State Department Security Theatre 0
Peter van Buren, author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, tells of his experiences being intimidated investigate by the State Deparment’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
As we sat in a small, gray, windowless room, resplendent with a two-way mirror, multiple ceiling-mounted cameras, and iron rungs on the table to which handcuffs could be attached, the two DS agents stated that the inclusion of that link amounted to disclosing classified material. In other words, a link to a document posted by who-knows-who on a public website available at this moment to anyone in the world was the legal equivalent of me stealing a Top Secret report, hiding it under my coat, and passing it to a Chinese spy in a dark alley.
Attempts to classify documents that are already public would seem somewhere between laughable and stupid, except that those attempts are backed by the life-crushing police power of the state.
Read the whole thing.
