Mayday

I worked on a quick piece for The Intercept recently, that's up now.  From the trove of documents provided by Edward Snowden is a report detailing the classified info that may have been obtained by China, after a collision between a Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in 2001.

The Navy's EP-3E plane was badly damaged and needed to make an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island. Although the crew was blamed by many for allowing secrets to fall into the hands of the Chinese government, the report makes clear that higher-ups did not provide the crew with the training or equipment needed to destroy all sensitive material on board. A very interesting read, check it out here. I was very excited to hear from The Intercept, I've been a big fan since its inception. Thank you to Philipp, my AD for this.

Declassify it

This piece ran in The New York Times on Saturday, but was online Friday evening. It concerns the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's use of torture, and the future of that report in upcoming administrations. Former Senators Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller are urging President Obama to declassify the report, in order to protect it from being destroyed after he leaves office in January.

The Op-Ed includes a little background on the approximately 6,700 page report, including the fact that only little more than 500 of those pages have been declassified, leaving the vast majority of it in "limbo." The president has the power to unlock these other 6,200 pages, thereby giving a full accounting of what happened during the Bush administration's torture regime, and making it more likely these shameful deeds will not be repeated.

Here's an alternate take. Providing a glimpse of what's in the report:

Thank you to Jim, my awesome AD on this.


Even now the crosshairs are centered on the back of your neck.

Two can keep a secret if one of them is an ant.

I  wanted to post this while I have a free minute... Out in today's (Oct. 13) New York Times Op-Ed page:

 For an article on a little know case of espionage that occurred just prior to the 9/11 attacks, and was therefore all but forgotten. Brian Regan was an analyst at the National Reconnaissance Office, who stole thousands of pages of documents from our spy satellites, attempting to sell them to Iraq and Libya. This example, along with other leaks, such as those from Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, show certain vulnerabilities in our intelligence agencies. The article makes the point that even if you cheer on the leaks provided by Manning and Snowden (I count myself as one of those people), there are many people with ignoble intentions that are trying to gain access to U.S. intelligence to do harm, rather than provide a service to the public about illegal activity and wrongdoing (as Manning and Snowden did). And agencies like the NSA have failed to learn from past oversights.
Thanks to Jim Datz, my AD on this, who provided the cool layout that allowed the ants to tunnel down through the copy.