Friday, December 17, 2010

Another Method of Dealing With Wikileaks

I've made my position on Wikileaks clear in previous posts. In my opinion it's a hostile foreign entity that the U.S. should destroy through covert action. But in reality, there is no chance that the Obama administration will act forcefully to eliminate the threat. At best the administration will be able to impose some legal difficulties on Wikileaks. I'm highly skeptical that it can be shut down through legal action. Given that situation, maybe we should try something else.

Since we know Wikileaks is targeting the U.S., and has already obtained information from a U.S. traitor, why not take advantage of that for our own purposes? The FBI regularly conducts sting operations designed to ensnare terrorists. Would-be bombers like the latest Islamist in Portland put their plans together only to find that their supposed collaborators are actually FBI fronts. It's an effective way to disrupt terrorists before they strike. Something similar could easily be done with Wikileaks.

The U.S. could have another apparent traitor or traitors contact Wikileaks with new troves of classified documents. The supposed traitors would be FBI (or some other agency) agents. The documents would be a mix of real but harmless material, combined with false or altered data. The false data would be disinformation designed to advance U.S. foreign policy goals. This would serve two purposes. First, depending on what information was planted, the U.S. might reap certain advantages before the authenticity of the documents was called into question. Second, if and when the fake documents were discovered to be fake, the credibility of Wikileaks would suffer. It would be revealed as a dupe of the United States. The authenticity of any future document releases from the U.S. would automatically be greeted with suspicion. Idiotic conspiracy theorists around the world are willing to believe almost anything, no matter how crazy. It's even possible that some would start to view Wikileaks as a CIA front and a tool for U.S. propaganda. Discrediting the organization and turning it into a laughing-stock would be almost as good as destroying it.

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